


Introduction to Sex Toys

by Pigzxo



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Roller Coaster, F/M, Foot Jobs, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, Lingerie, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Nipple Play, Oral Sex, Past Drug Addiction, Phone Sex, Relationship Negotiation, Sex Toys, Sexual Dysfunction, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhealthy Relationships, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, i use that tag only b/c annie consents even when uncomfortable, idk why this is a novella i'm sorry, lbr their height difference would cause problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 14:59:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12061350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: All Annie wants is to buy a discounted vibrator at Dildopolis in peace. Unfortunately, with Jeff insisting on walking her to her door and the flash sale only lasting ten minutes, this quickly becomes impossible.  The result? A messy, bumpy, totally unhealthy venture into friends-with-benefits territory.





	Introduction to Sex Toys

Annie looks down at her feet as they walk together on the sidewalk. Sometimes she thinks their feet are the perfect metaphor for exactly why it’s never going to work out between them. She wears dainty little heels, rounded at the toes, the heel so low they’re practically flats. What can be seen of her feet is smoothed out by pantyhose.

            But Jeff’s feet. Well, Jeff wears what can really only be described as old man shoes. They’re suede and have little laces with stitching around the edges. At best, they look comfortable. At worst, they look like he dug them out of a trash can. They don’t exactly go with the rest of his look – the faded jeans, sweater, and blazer – but he wears them religiously, like they’re the one thing he could never let go of.

            Maybe that’s where their shoes match. Maybe that’s where the hope is. Both of them hardly ever wear a different pair, as if they’ve committed to one look, one pair of shoes, for the rest of their lives.

            Annie clears her throat a little as she shivers in the late night air. They’ve been walking for almost ten minutes and Jeff hasn’t said a word since they left the bar. Annie glances at him out of the corner of her eye to see that he’s watching their feet too, seemingly lost.

            “You know,” Annie says, hating how small her voice sounds, how childish, “you don’t have to walk me home. I’m perfectly capable of getting there on my own.”

            “In this neighbourhood?” Jeff scoffs and shakes his head as if to dismiss the ridiculous notion. “Don’t be absurd.”

            Annie frowns. Part of her wants to lecture him on how women are just as capable of dealing with danger as men, that she herself is _more_ capable than him, even. After all, she’s lived here since getting out of rehab. Jeff’s been in the new, fancy part of town since before he could feed himself. _Well,_ she thinks uncharitably, _that probably doesn’t make it the_ new _part of town_ _anymore._

            But Annie doesn’t want to make him suspicious, doesn’t want to give him any ideas. She’ll let him walk her to her front door if it makes him feel better – she’d let him do pretty much anything if it would make him feel better – and then they’ll go their separate ways. She checks her watch quickly, surreptitiously, and tries not to frown. They’ll make it back in time but cut it close. That’s fine. He’ll leave, she knows he will. And if he doesn’t, well, it only ever takes her making a move to get Jeff to leave.

            They stop outside her building and Annie says, “Well. Here we are. Goodnight.”

            Jeff gives her a look that’s half _you’re crazy_ and half _are you trying to get rid of me?_ “Annie, I’ve met that psycho landlord of yours,” he says. “Let me walk you to your door.”

            Annie bites back a sigh. “He’s fine, Jeff. He’s not going to hurt me.”

            “I don’t know if I believe that.”

            “Well, I know him better than you,” she says. Her hand curls tighter around the strap of her purse but she tries not to let it show, tries not to give anything away. Acting’s never been her strong suit which sounds like bullshit when she hid her pill addiction for so many years. But no one really cared then. Jeff cares.

            She shakes off the thought. No. Jeff doesn’t care. Not that way. Not the way she wants him to. “He’ll have more of a problem with you being there than me going up alone,” Annie says.

            “Yeah, because he’d prefer to be in your bed himself.”

            Annie tilts her head, lets a smirk slip over her lips. “Oh? Are you inviting yourself into my bed?”

            Jeff purses his lips and gives her _that look_. The one he reserves for when she’s gone too far, for when he knows she’s teasing him and she knows she’s getting somewhere. Most of the time, Annie despises that look. It means he’s thinking about how young she is, how unready she is. But here, while she’s trying to get him to leave and Dildopolis is blasting 2000s pop music at top volume, that look feels a little like victory.

            “Don’t get smart with me, Annie,” Jeff chides. “Just let me walk you to your door.”

            “No. I’m not a child, Jeff. I don’t need you to make sure I get home safe.”

            “If Britta walked home, I’d walk with her too.”

            “Because you’d fuck her afterwards.” Annie lets the pause sit just long enough to see Jeff’s face go blank, to savour the shock on his face. Yes, she can swear. Yes, she _knows_ that word. And yes, she loves to see him squirm. Stepping forward, she lowers her voice and says, “Are you going to fuck me Jeff? Is that why you’ve come here? Is that why you’re insisting on coming up?”

            He shakes his head, at a loss for words.

            “I wouldn’t mind.” She blinks prettily. “All you have to do is ask.”

            “Annie...” He steps back and she thinks she’s won. Then he gets this earnest, terribly honest look on his face and says, “Look, I know we’ve got a weird thing going on and I know you know why I can’t act on it. So instead of pulling my strings right now, how about you let me make sure you get home safe.”

            Annie grinds her teeth and resists the urge to glance at her watch. “This is my home, Jeff. I’m safe. I don’t know why you insist on coming inside!”

            “Because of the psychos who live in your building!”

            She rolls her eyes. “They’re not going to hurt me! I know them by name. I carry pepper spray. I’m fine, Jeff. I’m fine.”

            His eyes narrow and he steps closer again. This time, when she’s not in control, it feels different to have him so close. He’s warm and smells like spicy cologne, the kind Britta says only douche bags wear. “Annie,” he says, his voice steady and smooth in that way he gets when he wants the truth. She swallows hard, determined not to give it to him. He says, “What are you hiding from me?”

            “Hiding?” Her voice cracks on the word and she mentally curses at herself. Swallowing hard, she shrugs and tries to step back. “I’m not hiding anything, Jeff. Except, of course, the very hot man I have waiting for me in my bedroom at two in the morning. He’s been waiting so long, Jeff. Do you really want to make him wait longer?”

            Jeff grabs her elbow and tugs her closer. Annie stumbles a little and when she looks up at him again, she’s sure all her bravado and sarcasm are as transparent as his attempts to push her away. That’s the one advantage she probably has. He knows he can read her but he doesn’t know she can read him just as well.

            “Annie.” He drags out her name and the sound shudders through her. “Why don’t you want me to come inside?”

            Her brain stumbles over a crack about him coming inside her but she doesn’t have the tongue or the confidence to pull it off. Instead she opens her mouth intent on saying something, anything, that might make him walk away – whether that be a ribald proposal, a temper tantrum about treating her like a child, or something else entirely, she’s not sure – when the blasting, booming voice of the Dildopolis intercom interrupts her.

            “THIS IS IT FOLKS! OUR TWO A.M. FLASH SALE. FOR THE NEXT TEN MINUTES, EVERYTHING IN THE STORE IS NINTY PERCENT OFF. THAT’S RIGHT. NINETY PERCENT. THE CLOCK STARTS NOW!”

            Annie, thoroughly unprepared to still have Jeff in front of her, goes crimson from head to toe. She can feel the heat rising in her cheeks and can no longer meet Jeff’s eye with the steady, overblown confidence she had before. No. The jig is up. Surely he knows. And if he didn’t know from the announcement, certainly he knows from the colour she’s turning.

            But Jeff, being Jeff, has to be an asshole about it. “Annie...” He tilts her chin up with one finger and she meets his eyes. She can feel the hot shame pulsing through her, making her redder than when she had an acne garden for a face, but she can’t help but like the spark in his eyes, that little teasing glint. It makes the heat pool somewhere lower, somewhere it definitely shouldn’t be pooling.

            “Annie,” he says again, dragging out the syllables, “is this why you didn’t want to go inside?”

            Annie bites her bottom lip hard, so hard she thinks she might draw blood. Then, with her best nonchalant shrug, she squeaks, “Maybe.”

            “Maybe.” He considers. Then he steps back. “Well, go ahead. You only have nine minutes now.”

            Annie stares at him for a moment, maybe a moment too long, and then scrambles away from him. True, entering Dildopolis moments after telling him _maybe_ probably wasn’t the _best_ idea. But he knew. He knew. She can’t do any more damage by walking through the aisles of hanging dildos and checking boxes, looking for the vibrator she’s been wanting ever since she got her own place. She thought, with the sale, she’d finally be able to swallow her shame and go up to the cashier with it. After all, six dollars for a sixty dollar vibrator? A deal would definitely hide her shame.

            The whole store is black from floor to walls to ceiling. Vertical cages rise out of the floor with various sex toys hangings from the bars or sitting on makeshift plywood shelves. Every few feet is a daring couch or wrought iron table, the furniture looking like it was taken straight out of a nineties vampire novel. Over it all, loud and assaulting pop music booms through speakers cleverly disguised as giant black assholes.

            As she searches through the odd aisles and tries to avoid the other late night customers, someone taps her on the shoulder. Annie feels her whole body go cold as she turns, knowing whoever it is will certainly be the person who murders her, but it’s just Jeff. She doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

            “Jeff!” she exclaims. She looks around, half-expecting the rest of the study group to pop out too, but knows it’s ridiculous. Meeting his eyes again, she gives him her best _what are you doing_ look but says it aloud anyways, “What are you doing?”

            He holds up a violently pink basket. “Helping,” he says. “Might as well go all out. Ninety percent off and all.”

            Annie stares at him, mouth agape.

            “Better hurry. Six minutes left.”

            “I can’t... I’m not... what is this stuff?” Annie looks down, dumbfounded, at the things in Jeff’s basket. She immediately knows he’s screwing with her, has to be screwing with her, because among pairs of fuzzy handcuffs and slutty lingerie, he’s thrown in dildos longer than her forearm and a few butt plugs. “I’m not buying all this!”

            Jeff gives her an amused look. “Of course not. I am.”

            Again, Annie’s not sure if that’s better or worse. She turns away, flustered, and starts to search through a mess of things on a table for the vibrator she wants. True, it probably wasn’t a great idea to go into the sale blind, but she wasn’t going to scout the place out either. The booming voice informs her that there are four minutes left and she curses under her breath.

            “Looking for this?”

            In Jeff’s hand is exactly the vibrator Annie’s been looking for. She feels the red hot waves of shame course through her again and quickly weighs the advantages and disadvantages of taking it. Saying _no_ might just be the upper hand she needs against Jeff, that one thing to say _you don’t know me that well_ , to surprise him. But she’s wanted this vibrator for over a _year_ and she’s finally here and it’s here and it’s only _six dollars_. She snatches it out of his hand without a word but she hears him chuckle as she turns away.

            At the cash register, she puts down the box and pulls out her wallet. But then the pink basket drops down onto the table beside her purchase and Jeff’s arm swings over her shoulder. “Sorry,” he says to the cashier, “my girlfriend gets a little impatient with me. Put these on the bill as well?”

            The cashier starts ringing through Jeff’s items as Annie sputters. When she gets her voice back, it’s enough to mutter, “I’m not paying for all this!”

            Jeff gives her another look and she swears to god she’s going to burn his face off with acid if he keeps it up. Those eyes. That smirk. She’s so done with him. He squeezes her a little closer and hands the cashier a credit card.

            “You’re not paying for my... thing!” Annie hisses.

            “Consider it a gift,” Jeff says, calm as can be, not even bothering to lower his voice.

            “It’s a completely inappropriate gift.”

            “It’s six dollars, Annie. I think we’ve been friends long enough that I can spend six whole dollars on you.”

            “Not when that thing is a... _vibrator_.” She whispers the last word like she’s not in the biggest sex shop in the entire city, possibly in the entire state, and winces at herself as Jeff chuckles. She resists the urge to hit him as he gathers his purchases, smiles at the cashier, and ushers her back through the maze of aisles.

            Annie, completely out of fight, lets Jeff walk her to the door of her apartment. Once she’s unlocked the door, she turns to face him and gathers the last of her courage. She holds out a hand and says, “My vibrator?”

            Jeff smirks – a real, full-bodied smirk, the kind he gives to girls at bars when he wants up their skirts – and Annie’s hand shakes a bit. Then Jeff loops the handle of the bag over her palm and says, “Keep the loot. You need it more than me.”

            She stammers over a few words, watches him walk down the hall, and firmly shuts her lips when he raises his hand in a sarcastic wave. With a groan, she slams the door as hard as she can and sinks down to the floor. When she realizes the bag is still around her palm, she shakes it off like a spider and curls more into herself, feeling shame, shame, shame, and more shame.

 

Annie’s nearly forgotten about the bag when it comes up again. She shoved it under her bed that night and never gave it another thought. Certainly she never took the vibrator out of its box to use it for its intended purpose. More certainly she never painstakingly laid out every item Jeff bought, wondering if he’d chosen things intentionally or simply swept whole shelves into the basket. Definitely, one hundred percent, she never _ever_ put on the black lingerie and twisted the fuzzy handcuffs between her fingers, wishing there was someone there to use them on her.

            Because that stuff, all that stuff, including her amazing, incredible, sensory-overloading vibrator that she most definitely did not use ever, is tainted by Jeff. She can’t look at it without thinking of Jeff. She can’t use it without thinking of Jeff. And she has never, will never, admit that she masturbates to thoughts of _Jeff_.

            Which is why, when Jeff brings up the bag out of the blue, she’s caught completely off guard and embarrassed _only_ because of the memory of the night he bought it. Not any other memories. No other memories at all.

            They’re in study group. Annie’s reading a passage on early civilizations and not really concentrating. It’s hard to concentrate when Jeff is to her right, leaning back in his chair and chewing on a pen as he obviously, shamelessly, reads a _Sports Illustrated_ instead of his textbook.

            But, incredibly, it’s Troy who breaks the last of her concentration. “We should do something for Annie’s birthday,” he says without any preamble.

            “Oh, no,” Annie says quickly. She smiles awkwardly and tries not to blush. No luck. “Really. I don’t want to do anything.” Her heart skips an involuntary beat at _ohmygosh Troy knows when my birthday is_ but it’s gone without an aftertaste seconds later. Her infatuation with Troy ended last year and, in a twist no one could have seen coming, landed on someone even more unobtainable.

            “I’m not doing anything else for Annie’s birthday,” Jeff says, not even looking up.

            “Else?” Annie asks, incredulous.

            He meets her eyes and she immediately knows she’s made a mistake. A big one. She’s blushing before he even opens his mouth and says, “Yeah, _else_. Or did you forget the big birthday present I bought you a week ago?”

            Annie looks away, too quick, and can’t even think of an excuse to mumble.

            “Oh my god!” Britta exclaims. She slams her palms down on the table and the noise makes Annie look up. Britta points an accusing finger at Jeff. “I swear to god, Jeff Winger, if you crossed that _very clear_ line, I will _gut_ you.”

            “Britta!” Annie exclaims, turning redder.

            “Jesus, Britta,” Jeff groans out. He slaps his magazine closed – a noise that would have been much more impressive had he actually been studying from his textbook – and drops his feet to the floor. “First of all, Annie is a grown woman. She can make her own decisions. Second of all, I didn’t cross any of your _imaginary_ lines.”

            “Imaginary?” Britta scoffs. “Yes, you’re right, the _imaginary_ line that prevents a thirty-year-old and teenager from fucking.”

            “ _Britta_.” Annie can’t help herself. She sounds like she’s begging Britta. She _is_ begging Britta. Because, sure, Jeff’s never touched her but maybe he did cross a line. And it’s a line she’d very much like him to keep crossing in new ways. And if it’s up to Britta – most of the time with Jeff it is up to Britta, whether he admits it or not – then there’s no way he’ll even toe over the line any time soon.

            Britta throws up her hands in exasperation and slouches back into her seat. “Fine. It’s your criminal charge.”

            Jeff sighs but says nothing, just crosses his legs again and goes back to his magazine.

            Annie forces herself to breathe. No one knows anything. Jeff didn’t even give it away. She half believes he didn’t even mean to _try_ to give it away – he’s just an asshole. But half of her thinks it was purposeful, a way to bring back the shame of that night when she felt that heat in places she didn’t want to. Maybe he knew. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just loves to watch her squirm. Maybe he doesn’t mind getting slapped if he goes too far. She’ll see.

            The study session continues. Annie goes back to the textbook. Everyone settles. Everyone except Annie and Abed. Annie because she’s too aware of Jeff’s foot tapping against the table leg and Abed because he’s busy looking between Annie and Jeff, Annie and Jeff, Annie and Jeff, like he’s trying to figure it out. Annie notices and gives him a sharp shake of her head. Of course, she’s not surprised when this has zero effect and moments later Abed opens his mouth.

            “I do think some sort of proverbial line has been crossed here,” he says into the blue. Everyone looks at him – Annie in hidden horror, Jeff lazy, Britta justified, and all the others in some state of confusion. “Annie and Jeff,” Abed clarifies. He points his finger between the two of them. “Not the line Britta was referring to, I don’t think. I pride myself on having better abilities than that. But whatever Jeff bought Annie, I believe it shifted their dynamic ever so slightly. _So_ slightly that even I didn’t notice it right away. But I can see it now. A slight shift.” He nods as if he’s just written a paper on the topic.

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Annie snaps. She forces herself not to shoot Jeff an annoyed look and focuses on Abed. “Nothing has changed.”

            “Something has definitely changed.”

            “Nothing—”

            “ _Something_ ,” Jeff interrupts, “has changed.”

            Annie shoots him a look that she hopes conveys exactly how much she wants to murder him.

            “I gave Annie a gift and she wanted to refuse it because of the price tag.”

            “But she didn’t?” Abed asks.

            “No.” Jeff smirks. “She kept it.”

            “Not like I had a _choice_.” Annie knows she should keep her mouth shut. Of course she should keep her mouth shut. But while smarts are her thing, impulse control is not. “He just shoved it at me and left! What was I suppose to do?”

            “Return it?” Jeff says, his eyes shifting lazily towards her.

            She squirms a little in her seat and looks down at her fingers. “I didn’t have the receipt.”

            Jeff laughs, louder than he should, and Annie kicks him under the table.

            Abed looks between them. He looks between them again and again and again. Then he shrugs and says, “This plot isn’t progressing fast enough. I’m changing the channel.” He looks back at his textbook and Annie spares a moment to be a _little_ offended that he finds Anthropology to be more interesting than her and Jeff’s non-existent love life.

            But that second is interrupted by Jeff giving her a smug look out of the corner of his eye and Annie can feel her insides heating up like fire and somehow she knows this game isn’t over, that neither of them won this round.

 

Annie sits on her bed enjoying the last hour of silence before Dildopolis opens for the night and its wretched soundtrack invades her home. For months, she thought this might be the best time to sleep but she found she could never sleep through the noise after getting a few noiseless hours in. So now she flips through her textbooks, highlights the most important things, and makes her study sheets in the silence. It’s nice, soothing even. Just a simple streak of yellow across the glossy pages.

            As Annie shifts to move her textbook further into her lap, her phone rings. She sighs and closes her eyes for a moment. She’ll answer it, of course she’ll answer it, but she always hates it when her mom chooses the exact wrong time to call her. If she called even an hour earlier or an hour later, Annie would have no complaints.

            Annie frowns when she looks at her phone. It’s not her mom but Jeff and it takes her a second to remember that no matter how cool Jeff thinks he is, he’s still old enough to use a phone as a phone. And Annie’s annoyance is only _slightly_ less knowing it’s him instead of her mom.

            She answers the call, hits speakerphone, and drops the phone on her bed. She goes back to highlighting as she says, “What do you want, Jeff?”

            “Is that always how you answer the phone?”

            A brief flash of embarrassment cascades over Annie. Yes, Jeff is interrupting her precious silence but he doesn’t know that. He hasn’t done anything wrong. And she snapped at him.

            She sighs. “Sorry. Rough day.”

            “Are you mad at me?”

            “For what?”

            “Earlier. In the study room.”

            Annie frowns but says nothing. She’s only half focused on the conversation with Jeff. The rest of her brain is trying to figure out why past-Annie decided to highlight the sentence _hospitals are very busy places_.

            “You know,” Jeff prompts, “when I mentioned the present I bought you?”

            Annie snaps to attention. She looks down at the phone with a wild glare like she thinks Jeff can see her through it, like she thinks someone else can hear the conversation. Forcing herself to breathe, she raises a hand to her beating heart and gets highlighter on her skin. The tip of the highlighter is cool. Annie swallows hard.

            “No one figured it out,” Jeff continues and maybe, just maybe, there’s something apologetic in his voice. Something cowed. Like he’s really afraid he hurt her. “And I was just teasing.”

            “It’s fine, Jeff.” Annie’s proud of how steady her voice is even as her eyes stray to her bedside table. She lives alone so she hasn’t exactly been vigilant about putting away her vibrator or the one dildo that’s a normal size or even the lingerie that’s lying on the floor. She bites her bottom lip, swallows her nerves, and says as nonchalantly as possible, “I like the gifts.”

            There’s a pause. Annie closes her eyes and prays she didn’t make a mistake.

            “Oh?” Jeff’s voice has gone lower, rougher. “You do, do you?”

            “Yeah.” As quietly as she can, Annie shifts the textbook off her legs. She sits very still, not wanting to assume anything, not even knowing what she really wants. “Some of them are a little... exotic for my taste but others...” She trails off, not sure what to say.

            “Which others?”

            “Which?”

            “Yeah, Annie.” His voice regains some of its teasing playfulness and Annie instantly relaxes. “Which toys do you like?”

            Annie licks her lips and tries not to clench her jaw. With a deep breath, she closes her eyes and pretends this is all in her head. In her head she’s done this before. In her head with Jeff she can do anything. “I like the vibrator best. After all, I picked it out and it’s... nice.”

            “Nice?” And his voice is like fingertips on her skin.

            “Yeah,” she breathes out. “Nice. It’s got five speeds and I can go as slow as I want, work myself up before I...”

            “Before you what, Annie?”

            “Come.”

            Jeff makes a humming noise that sounds suspiciously like a moan.

            Annie opens one eye to look at the phone, imagining what he looks like on the other end of it, what he’s doing. She strains to hear more noise but there is none or the connection isn’t that good or Jeff’s end isn’t on speaker. Biting back the last of her nerves, she says, “I like the purple dildo too. Not too big, not too small. When I get it in, it’s like—”

            This time Jeff definitely groans.

            Annie bites her lip and listens.

            “Don’t stop, babe.” There’s a catch in his voice and Annie feels the pressure in her belly build. Still, she hesitates at the waistband of her sweatpants, her fingers skidding over smooth skin. Jeff manages, “What’s it like?”

            “It’s like... it’s like being wanted.” Annie hates that those words come out, that she can’t stop them. “It’s big and engorged and I know... I know someone wants me. Wants to be in me. And it fills me up and makes me feel...” Her fingers dip below the band of her underwear and she bites her lip hard to swallow a groan as she grazes her clit. “It makes me feel tingly all over. Good. Wanted.”

            “Jesus, fuck, Annie,” Jeff grinds out. He sounds so wrecked that Annie wonders if maybe he’s not just listening to her. Certainly he has to have porn on his TV or a magazine out or maybe he started before he even called. She can’t be doing all this to him. She can’t. “Keep going.”

            Annie hesitates.

            “You ever use them together?” he prompts.

            “Once.”

            “And?”

            She swipes her tongue across her lower lip and forces herself to still her fingers. She doesn’t want to. She wants to slip inside herself, to prepare herself for that dildo. But she stops and forces her voice to steady and squeaks out, “This isn’t very nice, Jeff.”

            There’s a slight moment of hesitation and then, “What?”

            “I know what you’re doing. I know this isn’t about me.”

            If anything, the pause is longer this time. “What?”

            “Come on, Jeff. What else are you doing? Are you looking at pictures of Britta naked? Are you watching porn?” Annie knows, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she sounds crazy. But she doesn’t want to talk about being wanted with Jeff while he’s wanting someone else. “I don’t do these things to you.”

            “You do,” he says and the response is so immediate that she believes him. “Annie, I’ve been thinking about this all day. Ever since you blushed in the study room. I can’t stop thinking about what you must have done with all the stuff I bought you. What you want to do with it. Who you think of. God, Annie, I’m so hard right now just thinking about you touching yourself.”

            Annie lets out a little moan and she hates herself for it. She tries to swallow it all, muffle it, but she knows he hears it when he chuckles.

            “I hate you,” she says.

            “Tell me what you’re doing,” he says. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

            “I’m feeling...” Annie wants to still be mad at him but then he whimpers and she breaks. She slips a finger inside herself and gasps. “I feel tingly, tight, like... like you’re already in me.”

            “What’s in you, Annie?”

            “My finger.”

            “How wet are you?”

            “I’m soaking.”

            He tries to laugh but it’s weak, weedy, like his voice is failing him. And Annie is absolutely drunk with power knowing that she’s doing this all on her own. Her _voice_ is doing this to him.

            “I’m thinking about you between my thighs,” Annie says. She scrambles for the vibrator on the bedside table and gets it on. She hopes he can’t hear the buzz. She hopes he _can_. “Just kissing my skin, getting closer, I...” She gasps as she runs the vibrator over her clit and dips another finger in. “I want you to... to...”

            “I want to,” Jeff grinds out. His breath is huffy and if Annie listens close, she can hear the wet slick of his hand against his shaft. She pictures it. Jeff lying in bed, phone pressed to the side of his face, his hand wrapped around his length. And he’s shaking, trying to keep it together, so undone just by the sound of her voice. “I want to eat you out. I want to stay between your thighs for hours, days.”

            Annie laughs. “I think you’d get tired.”

            “Never.”

            She sighs and turns up the vibrator. Groaning, she arches her back against the bed and lets her eyes flutter closed.

            “Anything else?”

            “Hmm?”

            “The other things. You ever use them?”

            Annie chuckles. “I’ve tried on the lingerie,” she says. “And...”

            “And?”

            She simultaneously wants to forget she’s talking to Jeff and needs to know she’s talking to Jeff. There’s no one else in the world she could say these things to. It’d be uncomfortable with anyone else. But at the same time, this isn’t their relationship. This isn’t what they do, what they say, what they tell each other. Britta was right. There’s a very clear line between them – a line Jeff drew after that kiss – and this crosses it.

            “Annie...” Jeff whines, his voice drawn out and almost gone, “please don’t give up on me now.”

            “The handcuffs,” Annie whispers. She dips a third finger inside herself and curls all three at once. She lets out a moan she’d be embarrassed of at any other time, in any other place. Rolling her head to the side, she looks at the phone wishing she was looking into Jeff’s eyes. “I like... to take out the handcuffs and wonder what it’d be like if...”

            “If...?”

            “If... if you tied me up.” Annie feels her breath catch and worries over the silence. But she pushes forward. “I wondered... I wonder... what if you cuffed me to my headboard and just took me, any way you wanted to? I wonder what it’s like to be completely at your mercy, to... to not have to make the first move.”

            “Annie,” Jeff groans.

            “I want to know how it feels to be kissed by you, taken by you, when I’m not the one initiating. When I know it’s more than you... reacting to stimulus.”

            He chuckles a little but it’s breathless and catching. Annie feels herself flagging, fatigue washing over her, and the feeling in her belly is more like cramps than desire. She slips a finger out, turns down the vibrator. Her breath comes in huffs, puffs, and she hasn’t come but she knows she won’t now. She screwed up, over stimulated and then let herself come down and she won’t be able to work herself back up again for a while. The music from Didopolis kicks on.

            “Jeff,” she whispers and hears him hum in response. She reaches for the phone, cradles it in her hand and brings it up to her ear. She wants to hear him breathing, moving, gasping her name. She searches for something to say, something to help, but she’s drained and tired and feels stupid for telling Jeff what she’s told him. How much she wants him to want her. She bites down on the desire to cry. “Jeff,” is the only word she can get out.

            She hears the moment he goes over the edge – the sharp intake of his breath, the gasped and breathless sound of her name, and something that sounds like spattering. He laughs as he comes down, his breath harsh and shaky, and whispers, “Annie.”

            She doesn’t know what to say.

            “You good?”

            “Yeah,” she lies. “Yeah. I just have some more work to do so—”

            “You don’t want to talk or—”

            “No. No, it’s fine. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

            She hangs up before she can think better of it. Her breath sounds heavy in the room and her underwear feels wet and uncomfortable. All her clothing does. It’s soaked in sweat and she’s too boneless to move. Closing her eyes, she counts to ten and then rolls out of bed to wash her vibrator and change before crawling back into bed to go to sleep.

 

If anything is weird the next day, it’s that nothing is weird. Annie goes to her classes, raises her hand at every question, and runs into the others in the hall. She thinks, maybe, that it’s been a particularly Jeff-less day. But Wednesday’s on this schedule always have been.

            In the study room, he responds to her greeting with a nod and keeps staring at his phone. She tries not to feel hurt. She wonders why she almost doesn’t feel hurt. But she shakes it off and gets down to business – the Bullying Awareness Dance she offered to host. The others give her odd looks and begrudgingly agree to help after Jeff tells them they should. She beams a little but knows it’s nothing out of the ordinary, nothing he wouldn’t have done before.

            And time just goes by like this. Once again, the bag of toys is forgotten and, along with it, the phone sex that Annie half thinks she dreamed. She goes about her business and plays when she has the time. She stops wearing the lingerie though. When she puts it on, she wants to believe she’s waiting for Jeff to come over and now she has a sinking feeling that he’ll never come over. He’ll toe the line but he won’t cross it.

            She dwells on thoughts of that night. She wonders why he did it, why he called. Was it simply the reminder of the bag? Did he just want to know out of some morbid curiosity? Had he been drunk and horny and alone and she was his best bet? Did he think she owed him something after he bought all those things? Had it been impulse? Or had he really wanted her, just her, and been desperate enough to do something about it?

            She knows sometimes Jeff loses control. Sometimes he actually admits he wants her.

            So nearly a week later, Annie gets up and decides not to hate herself any more. She told Jeff the truth. She wants him. And more than that, she wants him to want her. He knows and he’s too cowardly to do anything about it. That shouldn’t make _her_ feel bad. If anything, he should feel bad.

            She discards her normal underwear and slips on the lacy black panties. They’re rough against her smooth skin, feel almost like wearing nothing at all, but she’ll deal with the discomfort for the power they give her. She feels like she could climb mountains or slit a man’s throat.

            She pulls her shortest skirt on – a little leather mini that she bought right after rehab in celebration. Her mom said it made her look like a hooker. Annie clasps the matching bra on and stares at herself in the mirror. Her nipples are barely covered by the black roses, the only parts of the cups that aren’t sheer. Little bits of lace decorate the top of the bra and Annie chooses a white V-neck that’s just a little see-through. The lace pokes out over her cleavage, teasing.

            Instead of straightening her hair, Annie puffs it up with her hands and throws most of it to one side. The result is messy, uncomfortable, and totally sexy. She smiles at her reflection as she pulls on a pair of black high heels – real high heels this time – and finishes the look with red lipstick that Britta lent her and she never gave back.

            And the result is menacing. The result is exposing. The result is... a little Rocky Horror Picture Show.

            Annie sighs and deflates. She knows she has to wipe off the makeup, change into a different outfit, and try again a different day. But still she hesitates, brushes her hair back, and wonders if there’s any way that she doesn’t look like a kid playing dress-up. She hesitates so long that when she looks at the clock, it’s too late to change.

            She weighs the pros and cons of showing up to class late. Everyone does it, especially at Greendale, and she won’t get into trouble for it. And if she does get there in time, she’ll get there dressed like _this._

In the end, her perfect attendance record wins out over her desire not to look like its Halloween in December. She shrugs on her backpack and makes her way out of the building, trying desperately to ignore the wolf whistles of her neighbours.

            She gets to class on time and uncharacteristically sits in the back. She doesn’t want people to know she’s dressed like this, that she looks like this. She’s uncomfortable with the attention and shaking on her heels and she wants to go home and sob and not go to any of her classes at all. But she swallows it all, listens to the teacher, and does her work.

            It’s all for Jeff but she avoids him the best she can. Avoids where she knows he’ll be, avoids the path they usual take to class together, avoids sitting by him in Anthropology. She gets out of class without him noticing her but she notices him. She notices him looking for her, tapping his pen against his notebook, whispering to Abed in a rushed and worried manner. Her heart swells and she wants to forget her ridiculous getup just to tell him she’s all right.

            But she doesn’t. She’s too ashamed.

            Lunch skipped, she’s walking to her last class of the day when she hears a guy mutter something about her ass. And it’s nothing bad, nothing mocking, just genuine appreciation. And it should feel like a win but it feels like objectification and Annie finally knows what Britta’s been talking about when she rants about the male gaze. Annie can feel the tears in her eyes and blinks them back. One more class and she’s done. One more class and she can text the study group she’s sick and go home and this horrible, terrible day will be over.

            She doesn’t make it. One hall to go and she bursts into tears by a water fountain. Her steps falter and she doesn’t quite set her foot down right. When she fumbles, she has a moment to think _I cannot sit on the ground in this skirt_ before a hand grabs her by the elbow and keeps her upright.

            “Are you okay, Annie?”

            Jeff’s voice, for once, is far from a comfort.

            Annie hides her face with her hands as if that’ll make her invisible. “Please please, just leave me alone.”

            Jeff’s hands come down on her shoulders, strong and comforting, and he ushers her into an empty classroom. Once he gets her into a chair, he lets go and Annie lets herself sob with abandon. Jeff comes back with a box of Kleenex and holds a tissue up to her. She takes it and wipes at her cheeks, sniffles back the mucus in her nose.

            “What’s wrong?” he whispers. He kneels before her seat and looks up with open blue eyes. He even forces a smile as he brushes hair out of her eyes. “The Annie Edison I know would never cry before class was over.”

            She laughs despite herself.

            “Why are you wearing this?” he asks and he sounds... He sounds somewhere between genuinely offended by her fashion choices and completely in awe of her bravery. “This is... this is not you.”

            “I thought you’d like it,” she admits and then hates herself more. Why must she always tell him the truth?

            Jeff smiles at her and it’s so gentle and soft that Annie wants to kiss it off his lips more than anything. He swipes his thumb across her cheek, catching rogue tears. “Annie, I love the way you look. The things you wear. I love that you’re completely comfortable in your clothes, in your look. I... I wouldn’t want you to wear something like this just to catch my attention. Especially if you’re going to avoid me all day.”

            “Well, the avoiding you part wasn’t exactly in the original plan.”

            “Here.” Jeff shrugs off his jacket and gives it to her. She puts it on, pulls the front close so it covers her cleavage. “I’m afraid I can’t give you my pants. I don’t think I’d pull off that skirt as well as you do.”

            She smiles or tries to. “Thanks anyways.”

            He stares at her for a long moment. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”

            She thinks she already has. But if he doesn’t get it, if he doesn’t know, she doesn’t want to give him any more ammunition. So she shrugs. “I thought I’d try it out,” she says as calmly as she can. “I wanted to give the lingerie a whirl and, well, my usual outfits just didn’t cut it.”

            Something changes in his expression and his eyes dip to her body quickly, so quickly she thinks she’s imagined it. But when he meets her eyes again, his eyes are wide and his mouth is trying to form words he can’t get out.

            “Do you want to see it?” Annie asks, feeling a little braver. She lets the front of the jacket slip open and Jeff’s gaze dips to her chest, to the little bit of lace that can be seen over her shirt. She spreads her legs a little.

            “Annie,” he whispers, his voice gravelly and shaking. His eyes wander down her body. As if he just realizes where he is, where he’s kneeling between her thighs, he shifts back a little and looks up her skirt. And Annie no longer feels the embarrassment of the other guys looking at her. No, with Jeff worshipping her like this, she feels powerful and like she could coax him forward with little more than a word.

            “Do you like them?” She’s surprised her voice is so steady, so calm.

            Jeff licks his lips and one of his hands curls around her calf. She feels her body tense in response but forces herself to breathe, to think. Jeff looks into her eyes again, but shakily, like he can’t stop himself from looking everywhere, from taking everything in, from imagining what the lingerie looks like under her clothes.

            “Jeff?” she prompts.

            “We can’t do this here.”

            “Do what? Talk about my underwear?”

            He chuckles and shakes his head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Annie. You know exactly what you’re doing.”

            Maybe she does. She smirks and crosses her legs carefully while pulling the blazer shut again. With a calm she feels but doesn’t believe, she says, “I have to get to class then, Jeff. Can’t be late.”

            He nods. “I’ll walk you there.”

            “I’m sure I’m capable.”

            “Are you trying to get rid of me? Planning on buying more vibrators?”

            Annie feels her cheeks go red as his smile twists. Without replying, she gets to her feet and walks out the door. Jeff is close on her heels, then his hand is on the small of her back, and soon he’s glaring at anyone else who so much as looks her way. Guys and girls alike. She tries to swallow her smile, tries not to like the feeling of Jeff protecting her, possessing her. But it’s no use. She’s gone by the time he stops at the door of her classroom.

            “Your classroom, milady,” Jeff says, trying to inject sarcasm into his still shaky voice.

            Annie reaches up and plants a kiss on his cheek. “Milord.” When she steps into the classroom, she’s giddy with the knowledge that he’s staring at her ass and she’s hooked him.

 

She waits all night for a call or text or knock that doesn’t come. When she finally falls asleep, it’s after two a.m. with all her lights still on and dressed in nothing but the lingerie. And she wakes with cramps everywhere and her ass itching from being pressed against cheap lace all night.

            Rolling over, she shuts off her alarm and looks down at her phone screen. She scrolls past news alerts and reminders to use certain apps. When she first downloaded them, she thought the reminders would be a good thing, a way to tell her that these things were important to her, but really they just make her want to delete her entire phone. As she scrolls, her phone buzzes and the screen immediately jumps up to the new message. Annie sighs, dreading going through it all again.

            But those thoughts falter when she sees the text is from Jeff. He’s a little late and his words aren’t what she expected, what she wanted, but she reads the _you up?_ over and over and over again, wondering if maybe the text came through late.

            She texts back: _Yeah._

He says: _Should have known you’d get up earlier than me._

She smiles a little, thinking of telling him she’s actually still in bed in her underwear, but before she can say anything another text comes through.

            _So you know that purple box that’s in the bag?_

Annie thrills at the knowledge that Jeff did pick things out on purpose. That he knows intimately all the things he bought her. Clearing her throat, she texts: _What about it?_

_Take them out. Wear them._

She frowns. The purple box isn’t something she inspected, something she tried to use. So she leans over the side of the bed and digs out the bag. Past the dildos, the handcuffs, and the butt plugs, there is a square box. She starts to read the instructions and feels her face heating up. She knows exactly where this is going.

            _You in?_ Jeff texts.

            Annie hesitates and then texts: _Of course._

Annie walks with small, timid steps as she heads into the school. The vibrator feels stiff and cold inside her, like she shoved an icicle up there and just decided to keep it until it melts. The underwear the vibrator’s attached to is silk and Annie can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Good because it’s smooth and feels nice on her skin. Bad because stiffer fabric might hold the vibrator more firmly in place and not let it feel like it’s slipping whenever she takes a long step.

            She’s halfway to the study room – they’ve planned a quick session before class so they can go over what might be on the quiz – when Jeff falls in step beside her. Without preamble, he says, “It might be less obvious if you walked like a normal person.”

            Her cheeks blaze red and she doesn’t look at him as she mutters, “Well, it’s a _little_ hard, Jeff.”

            He chuckles and wraps as arm around her hips. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.” His arm falls as they turn a corner and enter a more heavily populated hall. Annie swallows her disappointment. Jeff says, “Where’s the remote?”

            Annie expects it, of course she does, but it still throws her for a moment. Her brain short circuits at the thought. Is this really on the safe side of the line? She’s not sure but if it’s a line he’s willing to cross, she’s more than willing to let him. Without a word, she pulls the small silver remote from her purse and presses it into his palm. For a second, their fingers intertwine and then he removes both the remote and his hand from hers.

            “Good luck,” he whispers.

            Annie wants, badly, to ask what he means by that but keeps her mouth closed. They enter the study room and take their places. Annie readies herself to lead the group through the review. She knows without having to ask that she’s the only one who prepared a study guide, who bothered to organize their notes so that the material on the quiz is colour-coordinated and alphabetized. Not that she blames them. She knows she’s a little OCD. She does resent them a little. Just a little.

            “All right,” Annie says once Pierce has taken his seat. She clears her throat and flips open her binder. “The quiz is on Mayan civilization and its impact on modern times.”

            “It’s impacted the end of the world,” Troy says, “so there’s that.”

            “No, Troy.” Annie sighs. “That’s a complete misinterpretation of what the Mayan calendar means and—”

            “So the world’s not ending?” His eyes widen. “Yes! We still have time to finish _Inspector Spacetime_.”

            Annie bites back another sigh and looks down at her notes. She feels a slight buzz down below and her sigh comes out in an altogether less unpleasant manner. She knows if she looks up she’ll see Jeff smiling at her, smirking, hoping for some kind of thank you because he’s trying to make this easier. But she doesn’t look up. She just flips a page and says, “Let’s start with major gods. I assume you’ve all forgotten to look up their significance as we were asked to do?”

            “You mean after Duncan showed us that music video with the human-sized eagles cawing gibberish?” Jeff asks. He’s now pretending to flip through his textbook like he thinks the answer or the video might be on the pages. “I think he was just drunk that day.”

            Annie bites her bottom lip. “No, Jeff. The gods are going to be on the quiz today. Professor Duncan said—” She nearly cleaves her tongue in two when Jeff turns up the power on the vibrator. Everyone looks at her, unused to hearing her give up midsentence. She shoots Jeff a deadly glare which he ignores – or maybe he goes up another level – and continues, “that the gods would be on the test today. So, I think it’s in all our best interest to—”

            “Distract him by suggesting we watch the double rainbow video on a loop?” Abed says. “That way, we can avoid the unnecessary quiz which we all know is on a topic the professor knows nothing about and therefore cannot properly grade.”

            “I agree with Abed,” Troy says.

            “You always agree with Abed,” Annie snaps, trying to regain control while sensation spreads throughout her body. She tries to shift so that the vibrator isn’t directly against her G-spot but only succeeds in moving it further in. Her breath catches and her eyes flutter closed involuntarily before she forces herself alert and grinds her teeth. “We made this meeting to study. If none of you want to study, why are we here?”

            “To make a plan to distract Duncan from the quiz,” Britta says. “Duh.”

            Annie bites her tongue. She wishes that she had the rage to respond to that. But while trying not to tense her muscles or rock on the vibrator, she can barely succeed in not moaning aloud. “Fine,” she manages. “Continue.” She slams her binder shut.

            The others begin to talk while Annie crosses her arms and sinks down in her seat. Jeff turns down the power a bit, making it less intense and more of a steady buzz. She hates it and she wants to get it over with and she has a sneaking suspicion Jeff did this today not because of the lingerie yesterday but because he knew this would happen and he wanted her calm. Screw him. Screw Jeff Winger. She thinks this even as she stares at him, her eyes tracing the skin she can see between the buttons of his shirt. She feels herself calm, tense, the buzz fading steadily and she wants to whine, to beg, but she keeps her mouth firmly shut as her eyes fall from Jeff to the table.

            By the end of their meeting, the vibrator is off and Annie feels wet and sticky between her thighs. She tries not to let it show as she gathers her books and heads out after the others. Jeff falls back from his place in the middle of the group and lays a hand on the small of her back. “You okay?” he whispers.

            When she looks into his eyes, she almost can’t believe anything bad about him. He looks at her with love and affection and all the things she can’t believe she deserves. But he guards it all and that, well, that she’s used to.

            “Yeah,” she whispers.

            “Tell me if you want to stop?”

            She considers. Does she want to stop? Does she want everything to come to a screeching halt? No, not at all. Even if it’s not what she would have chosen, how she imagined it happening, she’ll give anything to have Jeff look at her like that. And the vibrator feels worse still than it does moving and it’s not like Annie’s going to go commando for the whole day. Plus, she likes the little smirk Jeff gets, the way he smiles when he knows she feels good, like he wants her to be happy. And she can’t say she minds what the vibrator does to her either.

            “I don’t want you to stop,” she says.

            Jeff’s hand falls and he squeezes her ass. She jumps in surprise, giggles, and then keeps smiling while he walks away. They slip into their normal seats in Anthropology and Annie doesn’t even bother to protest when Duncan gets distracted by the double rainbow video. There’s a slight jolt between her legs and she squirms, settles, and enjoys the near constant buzz that brings her through the class. It’s nothing orgasm-inducing, just an annoying steadiness, like hardcore making out when you know it can go no further.

            Annie meets Jeff’s eyes as she leaves the classroom and his lips quirk upwards. The buzz fades, disappears, and Annie has to deal with just the vibrator for two more classes. She gets used to it. When it’s uncomfortable, she shifts it and has to fight back a groan. But she manages. She more than manages. She enjoys and savours it and cannot wait until she sees Jeff again.

            Of course, seeing Jeff again means lunch with the group. She sits in between Britta and Troy and picks at her Mac N’ Cheese. It tastes like expired cheese and undercooked noodles but she doesn’t come to the cafeteria for quality. She comes to see her friends, to exchange stories of the day, and, for today only, she comes to see what Jeff will do to her.

            He slips into the seat across from her and launches into a tale about his business professor’s wife, three dogs, and a toddler’s battery-powered Barbie car. He doesn’t do anything. Even after the story ends and everyone laughs, he goes back to his food and the vibrator doesn’t turn on.

            Annie tries to hide her frown as she watches him, tries to hide her impatience. Time ticks on. Lunch is in danger of ending. In a burst of courage and annoyance, Annie slips off her shoe and rubs her foot against the outside of Jeff’s calf. He looks up at her, half curious and half amused. She moves her foot to the inside of his legs and slides it up to his knee, feels him shift almost imperceptively. Still the vibrator is off.

            If she has to, she’ll go all the way. Maybe he doesn’t think she will. Maybe he’s looking for a little in return for what he’s given her. She’s not sure if she cares either way. She creeps her toes forward along his thigh and he jolts back in his seat, his eyes narrowing as he licks his bottom lip. The vibrator buzzes on – low and almost imperceptible – and Annie smiles.

            “What are you two doing?” Abed asks.

            Annie snaps her attention to him and begs herself not to blush. Not that that’s ever worked before.

            “What?” Jeff says, going for confused or incredulous but coming off like he’s seconds from swallowing his own tongue.

            Annie feels frozen. She knows she should take her foot back, put her shoe on before anyone notices what’s going on under the table, but she can’t move. Her mouth seems to be working fine though because she says, “We’re not doing anything,” and she almost doesn’t squeak.

            “You two look guilty,” Britta says. “Guilt is a product of doing something wrong.” And she gives Jeff a pointed look that lets everyone at the table know what she thinks is going on.

            “Jesus, Britta.” And now Jeff does manage to sound annoyed. Annie starts to slip her foot away but Jeff grabs it under the table and holds it in place against his thigh. He turns up the vibrator a little. “Does everything have to be about sex with you?”

            “Sex does seem to be the most logical explanation.” Abed chews on a fry. “And if I’m the one saying that, I think you have to consider the accuracy.”

            Annie purses her lips and resists the urge to roll her eyes into the back of her head and die. Jeff pulls her foot forward and changes the vibrator to pulse. With a swallowed moan, Annie tightens around it and sends Jeff a pleading look she hopes can be misinterpreted by the rest of the group.

            “We’re not having sex,” Jeff snaps. “Right, Annie?”

            Annie wants to kill him for bringing the attention to her. Not now when she’s barely holding on. Not now when her every nerve is tense and tight and ready to fire. He jolts the power up for a split second then brings it down, maybe hoping to jumpstart her brain. And she hates him for it. She hates him almost as much as she loves what he’s doing to her.

            “Right,” Annie says and her voice is so steady she can almost forget what’s going on below the table. She pushes her foot forward against his hand, feels the seam of his jeans against her toes. “We’re not having sex. We haven’t even kissed since last year. I don’t know why you guys are all so obsessed with us.”

            “Are you bastardizing a Mean Girls quote?” Abed asks.

            “We’re obsessed because it’s creepy and gross and we want to protect you from this” —Britta waves her hands around Jeff’s head— “asshole.”

            “The Mean Girls quote is ‘Why are you so obsessed with me?’ Not ‘I don’t know why you guys are all so obsessed with us.’ I don’t ask for much, just that you don’t misquote movies.”

            Annie lets out a sigh that she hopes sounds like exasperation and not what it actually is – a perfectly normal response to having something long and thick vibrating inside her. “It’s not like it actually matters, Abed.”

            And this, of course, causes Abed to launch into a speech on how the correct quoting of movies is essential to the fossilization of what is now popular culture. Somewhere between when he’s lamenting the loss of 90s sitcoms and when he debates the merits of ‘Luke, I am your father’ versus ‘No, I am your father,’ Jeff slips his hand away from Annie’s foot. She presses forward and feels his crotch against her skin. He’s hard but not too hard and she rubs against him, hoping to make it embarrassing for him to stand up.

            But he cranks up the stakes too, causing the vibrator to buzz so loudly that Troy actually looks over at her in confusion. She ignores him. She has to ignore him when she’s biting through her bottom lip, trying to move her hips without giving it away, resisting the urge to simply ride the vibrator right to the edge. She feels alive and hot and like she’s in a staring contest with Jeff that they both keep losing not because they blink, but because the urge to roll their heads back and close their eyes is just too much.

            Annie’s not too proud to admit that she has no idea what she’s doing with her foot. She’s never done this before – she’s barely ever done the hand version of this before – but she’s beyond embarrassment. She does what feels right. She presses against him and keeps the pressure, rubs her foot up and down, watches for his reactions. He’s so much better at looking angry than she is, at looking like he’s mad at her for making him feel these things. Maybe he is. Maybe he still doesn’t want to want her. But she doesn’t care anymore. She just bites down on her smile harder and tries not to let the winning smirk slip through.

            Abed’s speech winds down and Annie knows they won’t get away with this once attention shifts again. She tries to get the vibrator in the best position possible, urges Jeff with her eyes to turn it up, but he has other ideas. He catches her ankle in his hand and presses her harder into him. Her breath catches. She tries to disguise it as a cough. He makes a sound suspiciously like a whimper but it’s lost to Britta arguing that the iconicness of movie quotes stand even if they’re misquoted.

            And when he comes – wet, warm liquid spilling inside his jeans and making Annie’s foot damp – no one seems to notice. Even though he makes a grunting noise that is definitely not PG and Annie gasps as she feels the vibrator go all the way up. She tastes blood on her lip, on her tongue, and resists the urge to close her eyes. Because if she does, they’ll get caught. Because if she does, she’ll miss the fire in Jeff’s eyes.

            But even as she stares at him, she knows it’s not going to work. She’s cresting and falling all at once, too quickly, and her body’s burnt out the minimal calories she’s gotten from picking at her lunch. It’s not going to happen but she doesn’t know how to communicate that to Jeff, how to tell him it’s over without words, without disappointing him. So she does what all the girls in movies do – she fakes it. Even though she’s not really sure how to fake it while trying to keep silent and not alert the others.

            She lets her face go slack, tries to make her eyes glaze over. She knows it’s working when she sees the corner of Jeff’s mouth twitch upwards. She heaves a couple breaths in quick succession and then lets out one long exhale, letting all her muscles relax. The power of the vibrator slows, stops, and she sinks back into the seat as Jeff lowers her foot to the ground. She wishes she could wipe it with a napkin without getting caught.

            Slowly, the others disperse to their classes. Annie puts her shoe back on and raises an eyebrow when Jeff leans over the table. He whispers, “I put some extra underwear in your bag earlier. You don’t want to keep that thing in all day.”

            Annie stares at him, at a loss for what to say.

            He frowns and reaches forward to brush her hair back. His hand cups her cheek, warm and solid, and she wants to melt into the touch. “Is everything okay?” he whispers. “You’d tell me if you wanted to stop? If you’re not ready? If you’re uncomfortable?”

            “No.”

            “You wouldn’t tell me.” He moves back like he’s been slapped.

            Annie shakes her head, looking for the words. She struggles but manages, “No, I’m not uncomfortable. I’m ready. Jeff, you have to stop treating me like a child.” Her voice shakes on the last word and she swallows back tears. She doesn’t know where they’re coming from, what this emotion is, what’s happening to her. Because here’s Jeff, offering her things she wants, and she’s fucking it up.

            “Annie, all I want is for you to be safe and happy.” He sounds like he’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t believe him. “And if I’ve started this too soon, if I’ve crossed some sort of line—”

            “Stop that,” she snaps. She gathers her things and gets ready to go. “You don’t have to worry about me, Jeff. You don’t have to treat me like this. I’m not some breakable little thing. I’m an adult and I know what I want.” She almost adds _and I want you_ but swallows the words hard. She’s embarrassed herself enough already.

            Without looking back at him, she heads to the nearest bathroom to slip out the vibrator. Her whole body shakes as she does it and for a while, she leans against the stall door and cries.

 

Neither of them admits that the thing in the cafeteria definitely crossed a line but Annie’s sure they’re both aware of it. On a daily basis, she alternates between being desperately in love with Jeff and hating him with all her heart. Some days she just wants him to touch her and others she just wants him to give up. But he stays firmly on the middle path, like he thinks he’s capable of straddling the line forever, and when she brings things up – in that not-really-bringing-things-up way of hers – he gives her odd looks that convey just how much he doesn’t believe her.

            Annie hates it. She hates him. She hates that he’s _right_ and she has no clue what the fuck she’s doing. She wishes she was more like Britta.

            Then comes the Anti-Bullying Dance. Annie spends all day making up the cafeteria, putting up decorations while students walk around her, then she closes the doors off at six p.m. to do the real work. She pulls out her clipboard and checks things off as she finishes them. Even with the slight rush, the missing DJ, and the wrong number of cups ordered, she feels calm and in control for the first time in weeks.

            When the doors open at eight, there are no signs of the disasters Annie expertly avoided. There are no signs anything went wrong at all. She stashes the clipboard back in the kitchen, sparing one more second to make sure the caterers have the vegetarian options packed _separately_ from the meat this time, and then heads out into the party.

            None of her friends have arrived yet, so she sits down at one of the tables and twirls a can of unopened soda. She knows that soon the study group will be there to cause a disaster, to pull her onto the dance floor, to do god knows what, but for right now, she’s alone. She’s asked them before to show up early, to not leave her there bored for an hour, but they’ve never really listened. She doesn’t really expect them to anymore, if she ever did.

            So she’s surprised when, at 8:16 precisely, Jeff slips into the seat next to her. He offers her a smile, one that looks real, and says, “I like your dress.”

            Annie glances down at the purple dress she slipped on. It’s nothing special – the kind of thing one could find at any department store – and if anything, it’s classic Annie, not worthy of particular praise. She smiles back all the same. “Thanks.”

            “Although, I gotta say, I kind of prefer the lingerie.”

            Annie gives him a doubtful look.

            “Any chance you’re wearing it?”

            “Jeff,” she says, quite seriously, “you can’t bully me at an anti-bullying dance.”

            Jeff looks genuinely offended for just a split second before a teasing smile breaks over his expression and he laughs. “Who’s bullying you, Annie? I’m just telling you that you look beautiful in that dress.” Something falters in his voice, breaks in his eyes, and by the end of the sentence he doesn’t sound like he’s teasing anymore.

            Annie stares at him, unsure how she’s supposed to react, how she’s supposed to take this. There’s her, there’s the line, then there’s him. That’s what she knows. Open honestly about how Jeff’s feeling? That she doesn’t know. That she doesn’t believe is possible.

            “What’s the angle, Jeff?” she asks and she’s afraid of how small she sounds.

            For a moment, he looks hurt. He looks taken aback, slapped, like she’s saying things he doesn’t know the meaning of. But he doesn’t get a chance to respond because for once the group is early, for once they’ve come to keep her company, and she’s so unbelievably glad they’ve saved her from whatever is going on. Because she doesn’t know what today is. If it’s a day where she loves Jeff or hates him, if it’s a day where she hates herself enough to do this, if it’s a day when she finally steps completely over the line and throws herself at Jeff. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know what she wants or how Jeff makes her feel or anything, _anything_ , that she thought she knew so well before that night at Dildopolis.

            Troy pulls her onto the dance floor and Annie goes with a smile. It’s not long before the whole group is dancing and Abed pulls Troy away from her and Britta’s drunk and hanging onto Annie’s shoulders. And Annie’s laughing, flying, and trying desperately to avoid Jeff’s eyes. She drinks punch and picks at the food and shouts along to the lyrics of songs Britta groans at her for knowing. And she avoids. She avoids Jeff like he’s the plague. She avoids him like he’s something scary, something like her addiction or college rejection letters.

            And when the night winds down, when people start to filter out and the DJ she called to cover for the first one has to leave to make his curfew, she sits on the stage and watches people leave. Shirley and Troy thank her for throwing the dance as they leave and she manages a smile. Britta’s nowhere to be found, hasn’t been around for hours, and Pierce fell asleep an hour ago. Abed goes with Troy but he only nods at Annie.

            Jeff sits down beside her on the stage, leaving a good foot of space between them. “So,” he says and the word feels like it weighs as much as a building. Annie doesn’t look at him. “That was weird,” he adds.

            “The dance?”

            “No. You. You were weird.”

            Annie sighs and lets her face fall to her knees. Because who knows what else there is to do? “Jeff...” she breathes out. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

            “What I want from you?” He scoffs. “Annie, I want you. Isn’t that clear?”

            She thinks about it. “I don’t know.”

            “You don’t know if it’s clear that I want you?”

            She looks up and she knows it’s a mistake the instant she meets his eyes. Because they’re blue and wet and wide and she doesn’t know what to do to make it better. If she touched his knee, if she kissed him, would that help? Or would that be too far? Should she submit to another game, to imagining him touch her when he’s a foot away and not willing to reach out? She doesn’t know anything. She feels stupid and it’s the scariest feeling she’s had in her entire life.

            “Annie.” Jeff sighs around her name. “What’s happening with us?”

            “I thought you knew.”

            “Enlighten me.”

            She stares. “I thought you knew because I have no fucking clue.”

            If possible, Jeff’s expression gets more worried. And Annie wants to hit him for it, wants to cry but doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He licks his lips and stands up. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, I think this was a mistake.”

            “What?” Her heart skips a beat, maybe three. She looks up at him with desperation and shock and feelings she can’t quite name.

            “You’re not ready for this.”

            “Stop saying that,” Annie snaps. “I’m not a little kid. I’m an adult and I can handle an adult relationship.”

            Jeff shakes his head. “Not this one, you can’t.”

            “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

            “You’re not telling me what you want. You’re not telling me when I cross a line. Annie, if we’re going to do kinky shit like this, you need to be able to tell me when you’re uncomfortable. And you’re completely incapable of that.”

            “That’s not true.”

            “Really?” Jeff purses his lips. “So then tell me. What do you want? What makes you feel good? What’s too far?”

            Annie blinks at him and shakes her head.

            “Do you like playing games in public? Does it turn you on?” Jeff bends down to look her in the eyes but it feels like he’s towering over her, closing her in. “Do you like it when I call you late at night? When you talked about bondage, is that something you’re into? Something you want to try?”

            “Jeff...” She trails off, having no idea where this is going.

            Jeff sighs and straightens up. He scrubs a hand down his face. “This is what I’m talking about, Annie. You don’t even know the rules of what we’re doing and I... stupidly, I thought you did. I thought you knew. I thought... I thought you wanted this as much as I did.”

            “I did. I do.” Annie scrambles to her feet. “Why are you using past tense?”

            Jeff looks her in the eye and licks his bottom lip in a slow, calculating way that’s anything but sexy. He quirks one corner of his mouth, says, “You’re not ready. And I’ve been taking advantage of you.” Maybe she imagines it but she thinks his voice breaks.

            Annie shakes her head. “No, you’re... no. Jeff. How is it not perfectly clear to you that I want you?”

            His smile hides itself away and he steps forward. Brushing her hair back, he stops to cup her chin in the palm of his hand. “I’m not an idiot. I know you want me.” He chuckles a bit but it’s a broken sound, a sad one. “But I don’t think you know how. And I don’t think you’re happy or that you’re ready to talk about any of this and Annie... the last thing I want to do is leave you in a lurch. But we can’t keep doing this like this. It’s going to kill you.”

            “No,” she whispers but she’s not even really sure the word comes out.

            He rubs his thumb over her bottom lip. “I love you, Annie Edison. I think I’ll always love you. But it’s wrong place, wrong time.”

            “No, no!” Annie almost screams when Jeff steps back from her. She wants to reach for him, grab him, but she has a little more pride than that, a little more self-control. And she doesn’t want to seem like a child throwing a tantrum. “If you love me, if that’s true, that’s the only thing that matters.”

            “It’s not, Annie. And the fact that you think it is...” He shakes his head and offers her one last pitying smile. “It’s all about timing, isn’t it? Isn’t that what all your little romance novels teach us?”

            “I don’t want to do this,” Annie says. “I don’t want to stop. Jeff, I’ll do anything. I don’t care. I just don’t want to lose you.”

            Jeff frowns. “I’m gonna call you tomorrow, when you’ve calmed down, and we can discuss this like adults.” He takes another step backwards and he’s almost at the doors and Annie doesn’t hate herself enough to chase him. She stands, frowning, her arms crossed tightly, trying not to cry. His hand touches the door handle. “We need to talk about this, talk through it, if we’re ever going to get to a place where this is all right, okay? So I’m not saying forever. I’m just saying that, for now, it’s over.”

            Annie nods curtly, not trusting her voice. The door swings after he walks out and Annie stares at it instead of Jeff’s receding form. She doesn’t want to cry again, doesn’t want to cry anymore, doesn’t think he’s worth it. Unfortunately, her tear ducts think differently and there’s nothing she can do to stop them.

 

When the call comes the next day, Annie ignores it. She knows it’s petty and childish but Jeff already thinks she’s childish, so why not add petty to the mix? It’s the weekend and she’s safe from him curled on her bed with her textbooks, working through homework assignments that she’s put off too long and studying for tests she should have memorized the material for by now. It all piled up in the confusion of the thing with Jeff.

            Annie doesn’t know when she understands it with perfect clarity but she knows she understands it a bit in the morning, when she wakes after three hours of sleep and feels stiff, tired, and like she’s missing a part of herself. She knows, even broken-heartedly, that Jeff was right about her.

            So she ignores his second call and his third too. She calls her old therapist, her favourite from rehab, and asks if she takes appointments with former clients. When she says yes, Annie asks if she’s okay to not talk about addiction but to talk about relationships instead. And when she says yes to that, Annie books a session for early Monday morning and goes back to her work. She blocks Jeff’s number.

            Time away from him, without him, even just two days seems to help. Annie spends less time hating herself, less time thinking about him, and she starts to feel like her old self again. Like the girl she used to be before Jeff was even a possibility for her love life. She thinks she likes it better.

            On Monday, after she’s told her therapist the whole story, she’s not surprised when she gets a loving smile and a joke about how she said this wasn’t going to be about addiction. Annie knows her therapist is right. She’s been addicted to Jeff since the first time she kissed him, hooked since the second, and walking the line between sobriety and a breakdown ever since. She entered a relationship in which she already had little power and then gave the rest of her power away. She did things she was uncomfortable with because she thought Jeff may not like her, may not want her if she didn’t. And even when he asked her, coaxed her, she pushed him away and refused to talk to him, forgetting he was her friend first, forgetting she trusted him. She’d been lost.

            She tells Shirley she might not make it to study group for a few days. When she asks why, Annie says she has too much other work to do and it’s not like Duncan’s really teaching them anything anyways. There are finals coming and then winter break and she needs to be on track. The study group isn’t helping this year, isn’t really doing anything, and while Shirley seems worried, she nods and agrees to tell the others.

            If Jeff worries, Annie doesn’t know. She does better than her best to avoid him and finds that with slight adjustments to her routine, it’s easy to stay away from him. She finds that she doesn’t need to try, not really, because all her habits made her run into him. There are easier, faster ways to get to her classes. There’s a better time for her to eat lunch that doesn’t force her to rush to her next class. And sitting away from him in Anthro? Well, she can get more work done on her other courses that way.

            It’s astounding, ridiculous, how much of her life she’s purposefully imbued with Jeff when it has nothing to do with him. She’s embarrassed, she’s ashamed, but mostly, she’s over it. She’s over all of it.

            If she has to pick a moment that perfect clarity hits her, it’s when she’s heading for the bus stop and sees Jeff sitting on the bench, tapping his foot. She knows he has a car and the only reason he’s there is to see her. She pauses on the sidewalk and watches him. Watches as he wastes time on his phone, looks up every few seconds to see if she’s there, taps his foot like there’s a beat. She wonders if he knows he’s just as far gone for her as she was for him. She wonders if he knows it’s unhealthy or if unhealthy is so natural for him he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.

            And she sees it all like she’s dying and her life’s flashing before her eyes. The first kiss, the second, the fateful day at Dildopolis, the rest of their mess. She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t blame herself. She’s a kid – she is, she really is – and he’s an addict in every way. So she doesn’t blame him either.

            With a deep breath, she makes her way to the bus stop. He doesn’t look up when she sits beside him. He only looks up when she says, “Jeff,” and his eyes light up with a sudden, bursting sense of relief.

            “Annie, thank god,” he says. “I thought you were dead.”

            She smiles a bit. “I just needed time away from you.”

            He blinks, taken aback, then nods. “Do you think you’re ready to talk about it yet?”

            “Do you think you are?”

            “I offered—”

            “I know,” Annie says. She meets his eyes with a steadiness she’s surprised she feels. “But I understand it now in a way I... I didn’t think I ever would. And I don’t think you’ve been working to see it any other way than how you already did. And it’s so much more than me not being ready and you not seeing the signs. It’s...” She hesitates, looking for the word. “Jeff, I’m not too young for you because you’re not... you’re not the person you think you are. You’re not more mature than me or even more worldly. There are things that have happened to both of us that made this a bad idea from the start. And those things are exactly why it happened.”

            Jeff narrows his eyes at her and his mouth quirks upwards, more confused than amused. “What the hell are you talking about, Annie?”

            “Call me when you figure it out,” she says. “I promise to answer this time.”

            Jeff just stares at her for a moment.

            “I have to stay here to catch the bus,” Annie says, giving him a weird look, hoping it breaks a bit of the tension. “And you, you know, have a car. So maybe you should be the one that leaves?”

            Jeff snorts and a bit of his confusion fades. “You want a ride?”

            “I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

            “You’re a weird girl, Annie Edison.”

            “I know.”

            He smiles and she watches him walk away for just a second before looking back towards the road. The trees on campus wave in the breeze, a sharp breeze that crackles with her every breath. She blows warm air into her mitts and warms her cheeks. She wonders if when he calls, she’ll really be ready. She wonders if she’ll know what she wants by then.

 

Jeff doesn’t call. The semester ends, Annie finishes her exams, and she goes home to her empty apartment to pack a bag for the trip home. She dreads it already. Seeing her parents is tough at the best of times, but now? How does she explain to them that without even touching pills she’s managed to backslide, that she’s seeing her therapist again? She doesn’t want to tell them a thing. She doesn’t want them to read the sadness in her eyes.

            The weeks have been slow and rough and rejuvenating. Annie feels not like her old self but like a wholly different person. So when the knock comes at her front door, she’s surprised to find Jeff on the other side of it. She’s all but given up hope that he would ever want to speak to her again. And the odd feeling of wanting that simmers when he smiles at her, a little awkwardly, and asks, “Can I come in?”

            “I have to catch the train in an hour,” Annie says but she steps back to let him in. He sheds his jacket, melting snow dripping onto her floor. She spares a moment to be annoyed but brushes it off. The floors are destroyed anyways. “I don’t know if we have time to talk.”

            Jeff nods as he hangs his coat on the rack. “Can we clear up just a few things, maybe? Enough that you don’t have to avoid me at the start of next semester?”

            Annie hesitates, then nods. She sits down on the couch and Jeff joins her, leaving more than enough room between them so they don’t have to touch. “What do you want to talk about?” she says.

            “I want to apologize,” he says. “I know you said it was all right but... I should have known you better. I shouldn’t have crossed the line in the first place with that phone call, by going into Dildopolis in the first place.”

            “I accept your apology,” she says, “but I didn’t want it.”

            He quirks an eyebrow at her.

            “Jeff, I don’t blame you for anything that happened. I don’t even really regret it.” Annie smiles. “Isn’t it weird to you? Knowing? It’s no longer this black hole of will-they-won’t-they. It’s no longer a weird taboo we have to tiptoe around. It’s happened. It was a disaster. Now we know.”

            “You think that was an accurate representation of what it’d be like?” Jeff asks and he’s teasing her a little bit but she doesn’t mind. It feels warm and friendly like it used to. “You think that’s what it’d be like if we were together? For real?”

            She shrugs. “I don’t know. Wasn’t that us together for real? Wasn’t that the closest we’ll ever get?”

            He frowns, says nothing.

            “You’re embarrassed of me. And it’s fine, sometimes I’m embarrassed of me too, sometimes I’m embarrassed of you.” She forces her best smile. “That’s all we’d ever be, you know? That secret in the back of the closet that no one wants to talk about. Maybe it’d be less weird if we were honest about it, real about it, if it wasn’t just about getting off but... it’d still be a dirty little secret.”

            “Is that what you think?” His voice is low and soft in ways she’s never heard it before. It makes her heart speed up in her chest as he swallows, chuckles. “Annie, I could never be embarrassed of you. I... You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever known. I just didn’t want to tell the group. I didn’t want to face their ridicule. It has nothing to do with how I feel about you.”

            “It didn’t feel that way.” She hates that she gets choked up but she can’t help it and she’s done hating herself anyways. She swallows hard. “I get that, I do. I get not wanting to tell everyone, not telling the group, but I feel like you don’t even want to tell me.”

            “What?”

            “You pushed me around and pulled me into things and it was fun and exciting and I had a good time.” Annie breathes through the tears but can’t stop them, can’t stop worrying about that look on Jeff’s face. “I don’t regret it. But I also don’t believe you when you say you weren’t even a little embarrassed by me because, Jeff, there were days, weeks, when you didn’t so much as glance my way. You claimed to love me but when you weren’t horny, you wouldn’t even look at me. I went out of my way to get your attention, I played along with things I didn’t want to do, and I gave everything, _every little part of me,_ just to get you to see me the way I wanted to be seen. And I succeeded, sure, for hours at a time. But as soon as you were finished...” She shrugs. “I was just your friend Annie again. The girl you kept at an arm’s length. And look, maybe... maybe you’ve done that before, maybe that’s what you do with Britta, maybe that works sometimes, but not with me.

            “I wanted to be everything to you. I wanted you to love me more than anything else in the world. Because I thought maybe, just maybe, that meant I was beautiful. It meant I was smart and passionate like Britta, that I was pretty enough to catch your eye at a party, that I was put together like Slater. But it didn’t mean any of those things to you. It just meant I was there.”

            He shakes his head. “That’s not—”

            “That’s how I felt.” She meets his eyes blurrily and forces a smile. “I don’t want to hate you anymore, Jeff.”

            “You hate me?”

            “Some part of me does. I don’t know. I... I love you, too. I love you a lot. I just...” Annie shakes her head. “You were right when you called it off. I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready now. I don’t think you are either.”

            “Right,” Jeff breathes out.

            Annie blinks the last of the tears away and sniffs. “Is there anything else you wanted to say? You came here and I kinda... took over the conversation.”

            Jeff forces his smirk and it shakes a little, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He shakes his head. “I just wanted to tell you that I miss you and I hope I didn’t ruin our friendship.”

            “No. Not at all.”

            “Do you want a ride to the train station?”

            Annie accepts even though part of her is sure she shouldn’t. She lets him carry her bags downstairs, load them into the back of his car, and drive her to the station in relative silence. The radio station is playing Christmas music and Jeff blasts it because he knows she likes it and she misses him more now that he’s beside her than she did when she was avoiding him. She wonders what to make of that.

            At the station, he unloads her bags and gives her a long hug. When he’s wrapped around her like this, he feels warm and heavy and Annie knows he means the world to her. He means more to her than he should and she doesn’t want to lose him, no matter what. So when he pulls away, she plants a light kiss on his lips – no more than a peck, really – and smiles.

            “Someday,” she says.

            He brushes the hair out of her eyes and his fingers linger on her neck. “Someday,” he agrees.

 

And Annie thinks it’s a tall order, a wish upon a star she never expects to come true, a spark of hope that she keeps more as a memento than anything else.

            It shouldn’t happen but it does. Slowly. So slowly that sometimes Annie thinks she’s gonna burst and tell Jeff she loves him and get into the whole mess all over again. But she lets it play out. She lets it go slow.

            Anthropology finishes without so much as a lingering glance. Annie likes it that way. She likes being Jeff’s friend, being his equal, taking his teasing the way it’s intended and not as a sign of something more. They spend the summer in loose contact – group hangouts and the occasional run-in at their coffee shop – and come back for third year with little tension hanging between them.

            That little tension is the return of those looks from Jeff. Not lingering, lustful ones, but ones full of genuine affection and love. Annie returns them when she can, praises him when he succeeds, laughs when he makes fun of her. Their friendship-only rule begins to feel tight, unwarranted. They spend more time alone but don’t call it dating, don’t cross the line they redrew together. They’re just closer now. Friends, best friends, something more that’s unnameable, Annie doesn’t know. She knows she’s happy and she doesn’t hate Jeff and she doesn’t hate herself and that’s enough.

            Tragedy strikes in the form of the Greendale Non-Denominational Holiday Party. Jeff offers to help with the decorations and Annie doesn’t so much as blink an eye – he does it all the time now. They decorate the cafeteria with tinsel and snowflakes and as many holiday-related pieces as they can. Jeff asks her about Hanukah and Annie replies easily, doesn’t even question his interest.

            When they’re down to three boxes of decoration left and the party is less than an hour away, they get to the mistletoe. There’s too much of it for the room – too much of it for the entire school really – and Annie laughs. Jeff smiles but the mirth doesn’t quite reach his eyes as he pulls some out from the box. With a shaking hand, he raises it high above Annie’s head.

            Her laughter fades as she looks up at it and then meets Jeff’s eyes. There’s nothing to say and there’s everything to say and Annie has so many questions but he’s looking at her with an open curiosity, a genuine wondering, and giving her plenty of time to say no. And she doesn’t want to say no, not even a little bit, but she’s scared all the same.

            “Jeff,” she says.

            He lets the mistletoe fall to his side.

            “Let’s not rush it this time,” she says.

            His eyes light up when they meet hers. “Really?”

            She nods. “Yeah. Let’s go on a date. Let’s have a totally boring, non-descript first kiss. Let’s watch TV on my couch in our pyjamas and fall asleep cuddling.” She swallows hard, knowing she’s asking for more than he’s offering. “That’s what I want, Jeff. If we do this again, I want the most boring, vanilla relationship you can even imagine.”

            “Am I still allowed to watch porn?”

            She laughs at the expression on his face and shakes her head in disbelief.

            He catches her chin when she turns it down, tilts it up so she meets his eyes. He’s positively beaming, the smile on his face so wide and bright she thinks it might swallow him whole. “Annie,” he says, completely serious, “I would give anything to watch TV with you in pyjamas and fall asleep cuddling.”

            “You know I wear flannel to bed?”

            “Can’t wait.” And it sounds like the truth.

            It starts with them ducking away from the group before the end of the party. It starts with them going to dinner at a crappy Chinese restaurant where they order too much food and stay for longer than they should. It starts with Jeff walking Annie home, both of them shivering in the night air, and him being the perfect gentleman and kissing her on the cheek at her door. It starts like a movie Annie watched when she was younger.

            They date all through winter break, stealing dinners and coffee dates and movie nights when they can. They don’t tell the group but they don’t actively try to hide it either. Abed seems to notice but he keeps his mouth shut. Annie can’t stop looking at Jeff, can’t get enough of how he looks back at her with heart eyes.

            Date nights become more casual, less planned as the new semester starts up. Jeff shows up at Annie’s door unannounced and Annie leaves school with Jeff to go back to his apartment. They make dinner together and get addicted to watching _What Not to Wear_. There are times when Annie forgets, genuinely forgets, that they’re not publically together. Jeff wraps his arm around Annie’s shoulders, her hips, and holds her hand on the school grounds without even thinking about it. Annie curls into his touch, brushes back his hair, and even starts to sit beside him in the study room without worrying or overanalyzing.

            And despite months passing, despite everything being comfortable, nothing much happens between them. Sure, they kiss. Their first kiss was, exactly as Annie wanted, predictable. Jeff kisses her while they’re cooking dinner one night. They’re arguing over salt content and its effect on the body and Annie says something she can’t even remember now, something that leaves Jeff speechless, and he just leans forward and kisses her. When he pulls back, she smiles and asks, “What was that for?”

            “You’re everything to me,” he replies.

            But other than regular kisses, some lazy make out sessions, and a drunken night when they fall asleep half-undressed without even really kissing let alone doing anything else, their physical relationship stalls. It doesn’t seem important. It seems like it developed so fast last time that developing too slow now is the only answer.

            So when after five months of dating, while cuddling on top of Jeff’s bed and watching _Pretty Woman_ , Jeff says, “What do you like, Annie?”

            She replies, “Fresh cut flowers, puppies, hard work paying off.” She tilts her head back to look at his face and he’s smiling but he’s also a little perplexed. She smiles back, loving the feeling of leaning back against him. “You. I like you.”

            “Just like?” he teases.

            She arches up a little more and he kisses her. She hums. “Maybe a bit more than like.”

            He shakes his head as he brushes a lock of hair off her lips. His expression is content but also a little sad, a little worried. Another Annie might ask what’s wrong but she knows him better now. If he wants to come out with it, he will and pushing him only pushes him away. Still she waits, doesn’t move, tries to meet his eyes with the question she so badly wants to ask.

            “I meant what do you like in bed.”

            Annie’s lips part but she doesn’t have words. She expects a bodily reaction, a speeding of her heartbeat, a burst of panic in her mind. But though she’s surprised, she isn’t scared. This is Jeff. And it’s not her friend Jeff she has a weird crush on and it’s not Jeff who doesn’t want to admit he wants her and it’s not Jeff who won’t admit he’s part of the problem. This is Jeff, her boyfriend, a man she tells everything too, a man she fights with only because she cares, a man who basically gave up drinking because it upset her. They go to AA meetings together on the weekends. She does more than like him. She loves him.

            “I like lots of things,” she says.

            “That level of vagueness is what got us in trouble last time.” His voice is calm even though his hand shakes when it brushes through her hair. “I want to know... what you like. What you want from me. What makes you feel good.”

            Annie swallows and shifts to get out of his arms. He lets her go and she settles against the headboard instead of his chest, curls her knees up so she can rest her chin on them. And she looks at him sideways, wondering, calculating. He’s very careful not to touch her now, not knowing why she left his embrace.

            “I don’t know,” Annie says, honestly. “The extent of my sexual experience is losing my virginity to a gay guy, some hand stuff with Vaughn, and what we did. I don’t know what I like.”

            Jeff nods, considering. “Okay. What don’t you like?”

            “I don’t like it fast and messy and with someone who’s not attracted to me.”

            Jeff smiles a little. “No worries there.”

            She smiles back. “I don’t like silence. I don’t like feeling out of control. I don’t like awkward pacing.”

            “Awkward pacing might take a while to smooth out,” Jeff says. “Two people aren’t always immediately compatible.”

            Annie nods.

            “Is there anything you did like? About what we did?”

            Annie considers. “I liked a lot of it, I think, in theory. The execution was off. I was definitely turned on by it. I found it intriguing but...”

            “But?” he prompts.

            “I never had that perfect first time,” Annie says. “You know, the one in movies? And I know it’s a lie to think it’s all gonna fall into place and everyone’s gonna know what they’re doing and it’s going to be romantic as shit, but... I think before we ramp it up to what we were doing, I’d like to start slow. I want to know what it’s like to do it soft and slow and like there’s all the time in the world and like I’m loved before I explore all the messed up things that turn me on.”

            Jeff snorts and then kisses her, so soft she thinks she might break if he lets go. Their foreheads knock together when he breaks the kiss, their eyes so close she can’t really see him. She can feel his smile when he speaks though. “I like that idea,” he whispers. “I want to take my time and learn every touch that’ll drive you wild.”

            She bites her lip, trying not to sigh. He moves in for another kiss and she moves back. When their eyes meet, he’s worried but waiting, ready for whatever she’s going to say. And here’s the panic. Here’s the one thing she’s scared to tell him, the thing she doesn’t think he’s going to like, the thing she hoped she would never have to tell him. But if they’re here, if they’re doing this, if she loves him like she thinks she’s does, then she has to tell him. And if he loves her like he once claimed, he’ll be all right with it and nurse his bruised ego some other time.

            “What is it?” Jeff says, soft.

            “When we were, you know.” Annie swallows hard and forces herself to steady. “I never came.”

            His eyes narrow. “What?”

            “I never achieved orgasm,” she says, hearing her voice squeak, hearing how stiff and young she sounds.

            “No,” Jeff says. “No.” He straightens up to look at her more fully, the incredulousness in his expression absolutely ridiculous. “You said... I saw you in the cafeteria... we...” He swallows hard and licks his lips. “Is this a joke? Because it’s not nice.”

            “It’s not a joke. It’s...” She sighs. “It’s not even about you. My whole life I’ve had trouble getting to that point. It’s all about pacing and not going too fast or too slow and I liked being tugged around a bit, I did, but it threw me off completely and I just... couldn’t.”

            Jeff stares at her. “So you’re saying it’s really hard to make you come? No matter what?”

            Annie nods.

            “Well that’s just what you want to hear from your girlfriend.”

            “I’m sor—”

            “Shut up.” There’s no animosity in his words and he chuckles softly, his eyes filling with affection. He cups her cheek and kisses her, smiling. “Annie Edison, mark my words. I will do absolutely everything in my power to make you come. And if I fail, I will fail only once my tongue is so tired I cannot speak and my dick is so soft it might as well be a pillow.”

            Annie laughs but he keeps speaking.

            “I promise you, right here and right now, that I will not give up until you orgasm or I die. That is the Jeff Winger guarantee. I will literally expire from exhaustion before I give up. Do you understand me?”

            Annie nods even as she tries to muffle her laughter with her hand.

            “You just have to promise me one thing.”

            She raises an eyebrow, unable to find the breath to reply.

            “You have to promise to never, ever fake it again.”

            “I promise,” she manages.

            He kisses her again and this time it feels different. And Annie wonders if this is what it’s like when Jeff’s not holding back, when he’s not worried about what she needs or what she wants or if he’s going slow enough. She wonders if this is how he kisses – lips soft and pliant, tongue strong and demanding, his hand under her chin to get the angle just right – and then she’s not wondering anything at all because it’s so hard to think when he’s pushing her down into the mattress and his weight is on top of her.

            He moves his lips to her jaw line, his hips firmly settled against hers. She feels her legs spreading almost involuntarily as a groan rumbles through her. He nibbles on her earlobe and then whispers, “How do you think we beat that silence thing?”

            She almost wants to laugh but most of her air is currently devoted to breathing way too heavily given how much they’ve done. One of his hands creeps under her shirt, rough calluses pressing against her belly, and she sighs.

            “Do you like dirty talk?” Jeff asks, as if these are serious suggestions to him. “How about too much praise? Insults?”

            “These all sound like kinks, Jeff.” Annie feels like she’s just lying still while he does all the work. She wants to do _something_ but she’s not sure what, doesn’t know where to put her hands, doesn’t even know what they’re doing yet. “I told you. Soft and sweet.”

            “Soft and sweet,” he replies, humming a little against her skin. He pulls back from her ear to look at her and frowns a little. “You all right?”

            “Yeah, I...” Annie feels herself blush and Jeff smiles at her and she blurts, “I don’t know what to do with my hands.”

            Jeff grunts and settles back on his knees. It’s ridiculous, really. He’s kneeling between her spread legs, they’re both fully clothed, and while they’ve decided to have sex, Annie’s not sure either of them really knows how to go about doing it. Even while dating, the line was there. Even now, it’s there. It feels uncrossable after the last time.

            “Awkward pacing, huh?” Jeff jokes.

            Annie snorts out her laugh.

            Jeff considers, his eyes leaving hers as he rubs a hand across his mouth. Annie waits, looking up at him, feeling oddly comfortable despite her awkward position. As dumb and dirty as it sounds, having Jeff between her legs feels right. But waiting for him to figure things out, to make her comfortable, doesn’t feel right at all.

            “What if we start like it’s some dumb teen movie?”

            Jeff quirks an eyebrow.

            “The first step is just to get naked.”

            He looks like he has a couple of things to say about that plan but keeps his mouth shut. He shifts off the bed then offers her a hand to pull her up. Once she’s on her feet, he pulls off his shirt and she’s faced with the broad expanse of his toned chest. She doesn’t know why it makes her a little breathless, especially when Jeff takes his shirt off all the time, but it does. Maybe it’s the proximity. Maybe it’s that she’s allowed to touch it.

            She reaches out before she really knows what she’s doing and traces her fingers over the lines of his abs. He sighs a little, a brief puff of air, and she lets her hands fall to the V of his hips. He arches into her touch a little and she feels powerful, in control, and her heart picks up pace but only in a good way.

            Dipping her fingers under the waistband of his jeans, she thumbs the button open and pulls down the zipper. Her knuckles graze his crotch and he makes a low sound that startles her. She pulls back her hand and blushes, refuses to look up to meet the weight of Jeff’s eyes.

            “It’s okay,” he coaxes. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

            “Screw you,” she mutters.

            He takes her hand in his and leads it slowly back to his waistband. She lets her fingers curl through the belt loops and then pulls down his jeans. He steps out of them carefully, crowding her even more, making it hard for her to look down without her forehead brushing his chest. She tries to stay focus, her fingers on the skin of his hips, his boxers the only piece of fabric left. Well, his socks too. She wonders if he’ll want to wear them during. She wonders if she minds.

            Her breath is heavy and the silence is heavy and everything feels a little too heavy.

            “Annie.” His voice is steady, calm. He puts his hands on her arms and she looks up at him, sees him smiling. “We don’t have to do anything if you’re not ready.”

            She feels that old fire to snap at him, to tell him she’s not a child, to tell him she’s ready for anything. But she stomps it down. She really considers whether or not she’s ready to take the next step, to go over that line with Jeff by her side. She’d be lying if she says she hasn’t thought about it, hasn’t left Jeff’s apartment to go home to her vibrator, hasn’t pulled away from make out sessions because she’s afraid she’ll just unbuckle his belt and sink down onto his hard cock.

            She closes her eyes and steadies her breathing. When she looks back at him, he’s worried but still waiting.

            “Let’s just even the playing field,” Annie says. And before he can ask what she means, she shrugs off her sweater and reaches back an arm to undo the zipper on her dress.

            “Let me help,” Jeff says, his voice low and ruined in ways Annie never thought to imagine. He steps closer, his body pressing against hers, and pulls down the zipper. His fingers dance down her spine like sparks from a lit firework. She breathes into his chest, tastes the sweat on his skin.

            On impulse, she sticks out her tongue and licks his chest. His fingers stutter against her back, his body freezing, and she’s afraid she’s done something wrong. Then he puffs out a breath that’s anything but steady and Annie smiles against his skin. She licks him again, loving and hating the taste of his chest, mildly aware this is a little gross. But sex is gross, she’s sure, no matter who you’re with.

            As he pulls her dress down her arms, she presses a kiss to one of his nipples and feels him shudder. She laps at it, sucks, loves the way he comes undone with groans of her name as he drops her dress to the floor. One of his hands tangles into her hair, keeping her close, and she lets her teeth graze his hard nipple.

            “Damn it,” he breathes, his head resting on top of hers, his lips in her hair.

            She can feel him hard against her, his hips pressed up against her stomach. “Jeff,” she says after a moment, “how is this going to work?”

            “Do you want me to explain sex to you?” He’s going for lazy sarcasm, she can tell, but it comes out breathless and desperate like he’s more than happy to do it.

            “I meant more with our height difference.”

            Jeff laughs a little. “We’ll figure it out.”

            Annie’s not sure, she’s a little concerned, but she takes a deep breath and pushes him back a step. He looks down at her curiously but the curiosity changes to brain-stopping lust when she reaches behind her back to undo her bra. It comes off easily – she’s a little surprised, she usually struggles with this one – and she lets it slip to the floor. She’s unsettled by Jeff looking at her breasts but in a good way. In a way that makes heat pool in her stomach and every nerve in her body tell her to _get on with this_.

            “Jeff?” she asks, soft.

            “Yeah?” His eyes don’t move.

            “Come here.”

            He steps forward and cups her breasts in his hands. His fingers are rough and strong and it hurts a little when he squeezes them, but then he starts to twists with just the right amount of pressure and Annie gasps. He swipes a thumb over her nipple causing her to shudder. Then he pushes her back.

            She falls onto the bed, her feet dangling off the edge, but she doesn’t have a moment to think before he’s kissing a line up her stomach. His hands graze the outside of her thighs, slide up her torso in perfect pace with his lips. He gets his mouth around a breast and sucks, biting into the soft skin like he intends to leave marks and she hopes he does. She wants to be marked by his mouth on every inch of her skin, bruised with trophies of how much he wants her.

            She arches into him, feeling his dick hard against the inside of her thigh, wanting him closer to the goal which is burning and wet and she whimpers as his fingers trail down her stomach. He curls them in the waist of her panties and comes off her breast to meet her eyes. “You’re sure?” he says.

            She’s breathless but she nods and she manages to say, “yes” but not at any volume that can be heard.

            Jeff pulls down her panties just enough to swipe his thumb over her clit and she bucks upward. With a chuckle, he places his other hand at her hip to hold her down and slides his lips down the length of her torso as his thumb rubs circles over her.

            As his thumb slips away, his tongue replaces it. And seconds later, one of his long, rough fingers is pushing its way into her and she’s breathless and gasping and she can tell he’s enjoying it way too much by the smile pressed against her clit.

            “Hey,” she says, not managing the tone of voice she wants and barely managing volume, “remember what we said about silence?”

            Jeff chuckles and looks up at her. Just as his lips slip away, giving her momentary clarity, he slips another finger in and she whimpers. “I’m a little busy,” he says, the same way he might say it when he’s sitting in the study room clearly doing nothing on his phone, “so you’re gonna have to make some noise if you don’t like the silence.”

            “We could turn on some music,” Annie suggests.

            Jeff gives her a look like _really_ and she almost takes his point because he’s doing well and she’s squirming as he scissors his fingers and his mouth is all red and busted up and she bet he tastes kinda like her. But she gives him a pleading look anyways, an _I’m serious_ look, and he sighs.

            Slipping out his fingers, he gets to his feet and grabs his iPod. He flicks through the music, chooses something, and then deposits it in the speaker on his dresser. Suddenly, soft instrumental music fills the room and Annie smiles.

            “What?” Jeff says as he walks back to her.

            She shrugs. “I just didn’t take you for a Mozart guy.”

            “Don’t look so impressed. He was the only composer I could name when I was looking for something to play during sex.”

            “Oh? So this is like your go-to song?” Annie fake swoons. “I feel so special.”

            “I am not above making you beg for it.”

            She smiles at him, so wide it hurts a little bit. And he leans over her, his knees pushing her legs further apart, and he smirks like he knows exactly what he’s doing. But she’s not so stupid as to think he’s really in any position to make her wait.

            “You’ll be waiting all night for that,” Annie says, feeling confidence she didn’t know she had. She places a hand on his chest as he raises an eyebrow, lets it move lower as she continues, “And we both know you’re ready to burst, taking it slow just to make me happy.”

            “Oh, Annie. You know better than to—”

            He nearly bites through his tongue as she takes his cloth-covered dick in her hand. All the while, she looks up at him innocently, like she’s doing nothing wrong, even as she presses her palm up against his hardness. His eyes close, his lips in a tight line as his hips thrust forward involuntarily.

            “You want me, Jeff,” she whispers. She can smirk because she knows he’s not looking. “You want me in ways you didn’t think possible. And I can give you everything you’ve been dreaming of, if only...”

            “Let me guess.” Jeff bites the words out, opens his eyes to fix her with a solid glare. “I only beg for it?”

            “You catch on quick.”

            He’s about to say something and she’s sure it’ll be smart and sassy and all those things Jeff Winger is, but she doesn’t want to hear it. So she dips her hand under the waistband of his boxers and takes his cock in her hand. She hopes the pressure is enough as she strokes it, smiles when Jeff gasps out her name and his face screws up in a wild, weird way she wishes she had a picture of. She fondles his balls and he dips his head into her shoulder, biting into her skin and making her lose confidence in her level of control.

            One of his hands grasps her ass, pulling her up and into him. The other twists her breast again as she sucks at his neck, pulling at his hair as she strokes him. “Annie,” he grumbles, muffled at her shoulder. “Truce?”

            She giggles and turns to catch his lips with hers. As she pulls her hand out of his boxers, she uses her other hand to push them down and Jeff does the rest of the work to kick them down. He pulls out of the kiss to meet her eyes with a mischievous look that makes her whole body hot and cold and tight. Then he looks down at where his dick is rubbing against her belly button and admits, “The height thing might be a bit of an issue.”

            “I could be on top?” Annie suggests and by the way his eyes light up, she knows it’s a good idea.

            “Think you can roll me over?”

            She snorts. “Sure. Just let me remember my moves from when I was a Bond girl.”

            He smiles, kisses her, and then rolls off of her. With a bit of scrambling, they situate themselves so they’re actually on the bed the right way – Jeff half-resting against the headboard, his legs stretched out. He reaches out and grasps Annie’s hips as she gets into place straddling his legs. He licks his lips. She squirms a little in his hands, earning herself a rough squeeze on the ass.

            “You ready?” he says.

            She nods. “You?”

            “Always ready.”

            With a puff of a laugh, she looks down to situate herself properly. She holds onto his shoulder with one hand and then takes his cock in her other. He hums out a groan as she lowers herself onto him, the sensation at once brand new and wholly familiar. She gasps as she sinks down, the sounds coming at regular intervals as he stretches her out, filling her completely, the length of him almost too much to take. She bites down on her lip as she settles fully onto him, her eyes closed and breath heavy.

            “Annie?” he says after a moment.

            “Yeah?”

            “I know you haven’t done this a lot, but you are supposed to move.”

            She laughs and opens her eyes to look at him. “Oh, really? Thanks for the advice.”

            “Happy to help.”

            Leaning forward, she kisses him, knowing that once she starts moving, that won’t be a possibility. And she loves the way he lingers in the kiss, even though it’s delaying his pleasure and hers. She steals a few more kisses than she thought she would, lets him bite a trail down her neck as he squeezes her ass and tries to thrust upwards. She gasps and giggles at the sensation before pulling back and steadying herself.

            “Milady,” he says, sarcasm fully back in play.

            “Milord.”

            Annie gives him a wicked grin and then pulls herself up before coming back down hard. And it hurts but it also fires all her nerves at once and she gasps just as Jeff does. His fingers dig into her flesh, certainly leaving bruises, and she sets a steady pace as she slides up and down his length. He growls and whimpers and comes as close to begging as Annie thinks is possible for Jeff Winger.

            He wraps an arm around her hips and pulls her closer, burying his face between her breasts, licking and biting and sucking. Annie grasps his hair, trying to ignore the sounds coming out of her own mouth as she thrusts down onto him. Every hit is a burst of pleasure, a warming, filling sensation as he pulses in her and ravishes her chest and grips her ass like maybe he can make her go harder, faster, if he’s just better for her.

            And she does her best to go as hard and fast as she can. She tightens herself around his length and listens to his groans. She kisses his face, even moves one hand to play with his nipples again. The whine he lets out is pathetic and needy and so hot Annie almost goes over the edge as she slides back down onto his cock.

            But really undoes her is when he starts to rub his fingers over her clit. The new sensation shoots through her, making all her sore muscles feel renewed as he kisses across her collarbone and massages her ass. She whines and buries her face in his hair and feels so full, so warm, so desperate that it’s not a surprise when she breaks over the edge.

            She feels it pooling first – the heat and the tingling and that rough cramp at her entrance – and then it breaks like a wave, sudden and overflowing. She lets her breath go all at once, sinking down onto Jeff and forgetting to move as she struggles to breathe. He pulls his lips off her, curious or worried, she’s not sure, but when he meets her eyes his entire expression is awed. He renews his efforts at her clit and starts to thrust upwards, causing her to gasp and swear and beg in the form of his name. The whole time he looks at her, memorizing her, and she wants to be embarrassed but she can’t find the will to care. She knows she’s sweaty and red and smells but Jeff doesn’t seem to care at all.

            He pounds into her right until the feeling peters out and her face goes slack and her breathing steadies a little. She wraps her arms around his neck, tired and lazy and presses her lips to his.

            “Annie,” he says against her lips. She hums. “I’m going to flip you over and fuck you into this mattress, okay?”

            “Okay,” she whispers.

            He turns them in a smooth motion, almost too smooth, almost unrealistic, but Annie shelves that thought for another day. He grips her thigh, pulling up her leg, and starts to thrust into her with everything she’s got. And if she thought _she_ was going hard, well, now she knows that was nothing. Even just after orgasm, he’s getting her going again, making her writhe as his name leaves her lips like the sound of a broken record.

            Some part of her brain knows it’s his turn, this is him chasing his orgasm, and she tries to help. She spreads her hands over his chest and pinches his nipples, causing his hips to stutter. She squeezes around his length. And when none of that seems like enough, when he’s still spiralling into her like he’s trying to break her, she says, “Jeff. Jeff, please. Please come in me. Please. I wanna feel you.”

            “Fuck, Annie,” he whispers and if she didn’t know he loved her before that, she knows now.

            It takes a couple more thrusts and Annie’s teeth around one of his nipples for him to come. But when he does, he comes hard, burying deep inside her and spilling warm liquid everywhere. Annie gasps, reeling from the loss of sensation, from losing the edge of what might have been a second orgasm if he’d lasted a little longer. She lets out a long exhale as his chest falls and expands and she feels him warm against her.

            Slowly, he pulls out and lies down beside her. She feels his come dripping between her legs, knows it’ll get sticky soon and dry uncomfortably. She knows she should care but she doesn’t.

            Turning her head, she looks into Jeff’s eyes and sees the same shock and wonder she feels. They wasted years not doing this but maybe they needed those years to be able to do this. She isn’t sure. She doesn’t want to think about it. She sighs and he reaches out an arm to pull her closer.

            Annie rests against Jeff’s chest, hearing his heartbeat in her ear. He turns his head to kiss her temple. She curls closer, wanting all of her touching all of him as the world slows and she finds all of herself again. She finds herself smiling and it’s odd because if anything, it was far from perfect, but it is perfect to her.

            “Annie,” he whispers, his voice gravelly and fatigued, “are you okay?”

            “Yeah,” she breathes out.

            He glances down at her and she tilts her chin to meet his worried eyes. Jeff’s always worried when it comes to her and she wonders when that’ll fade, if it’ll fade. She scratches her nails across his chest and he relaxes a little, his lips tilting upwards.

            “You don’t look okay.”

            “I’m just thinking,” she says. She rolls onto her stomach to look at him better and he lets his hand land on her back. His thumb skids down her spine and there’s a look of wonder in his eyes like he’s not quite sure what to make of everything either. “Are you okay?”

            “I don’t know.”

            Annie feels her heart sink and she frowns but doesn’t push.

            “You might be the first girl I’ve done that with that I actually love,” he says, “and it was... different, somehow.”

            She smiles. “Well, if it’s any consolation, it was different from my other times too.”

            Jeff snorts as he brushes sweaty locks of hair off her cheeks. She spares a thought for what a mess she must look – she can feel the sweat everywhere, especially in her hair – but Jeff looks at her the same as he would if she were all dolled up. He licks his lips and asks, “What are you thinking about?”

            She has a thousand thoughts but she knows which ones he’s referring too. The thoughts making her frown, the ones putting a weight in her stomach while she lies here in her own perfect moment. She says, “I’m thinking about telling the group. Telling my parents. Telling... anyone, really.”

            Jeff’s brow wrinkles. “Are you worried?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Because I think the group’s a little more observant than you give them credit for,” Jeff says. “Britta already threatened my life if I hurt you. Troy gave me a whole lecture on not changing your personality, although I’m not really sure he’s aware you’re no longer in high school.” –Annie laughs– “And then there’s Abed telling me we’ve messed up the story arc by getting together too soon.”

            “But don’t most famous sitcom couples get together in the early seasons?”

            Jeff sighs. “I tried the same argument. He says after our failed kissing attempts in season one, which led to an awkward start to season two which eventually petered out, us getting together in season three seems forced and like we’re deliberately trying to curry audience favour.” He rolls his eyes. “Anyways, he gives us two weeks until we break up, causing a messy and terrible plot line that will follow us throughout the course of the show until we eventually reunite in the finale.”

            Annie blinks at him. “That’s crazy.”

            “I’m aware. But my point is that the group already knows.”

            “Even Shirley and Pierce?”

            “Well, Pierce patted me on the back the other day and cryptically said I was doing ‘God’s work’ so maybe? And Shirley gave me a rather long lecture on sex out of wedlock today.”

            “Today?” Annie laughs. “You got that lecture _today_ and then drew the obvious conclusion that you should actually start having sex out of wedlock as soon as possible?”

            “I figured if I was going to be lectured for it anyways...” He trails off as Annie dissolves into giggles, pressing her face into his chest as an attempt to stop herself. He places a hand on the back of her head and runs his fingers through her hair, gentle, soothing. She can hear him breathing, can feel the beat of his heart.

            When the laughter subsides, Annie whispers, “Two weeks, huh?”

            “What sitcom couple has ever broken up right after having sex?”

            Annie looks up at him. “Ross and Rachel. Donna and Eric. Mindy and Danny. Will and Grace broke up right when they were about to have sex.”

            “Will was gay, Annie,” Jeff says.

            “The others stand.”

            “Do they?”

            Annie shrugs.

            Jeff leans forward and kisses her, the smile on his lips transferring to hers. When he fixes his blue eyes on her, all her irrational worries fade away. “Have I ever broken a promise I’ve made to you?”

            “You’ve only ever made one.”

            “But did I break it?”

            “No.”

            “Then hear this.” But he doesn’t say anything. He just kisses her like his life depends on it, like everything depends on it, and rolls on top of her. She giggles, loving the weight of his body, the feel of his skin on hers. She twists their legs together, trying to pull him closer, but despite the fact that they’re naked and in bed, he seems intent on keeping only their lips together. But then he breaks the kiss too and cages her head in with his arms to hold his weight. Their noses skid together and he whispers, “I promise I will not leave you unless you want me to.”

            “Why would I want you to?”

            He smiles but it’s sad, it’s wise. “You’re young, Annie,” he says. “Who knows what you’ll want in a year? In two, in five? It might not be me.”

            “It’ll always be you.”

            He chuckles, ducks his head and kisses her, his lips lingering on hers and then falling to her jaw line. He gets distracted there, pulling groans out of her with his tongue, and she holds him in place, lets her eyes close. She’s tired and sated and knows even if he does die this time, she won’t be able to come again, but all the same she wants to go again. She wants to feel him around her, in her, all over again. She wants to do this every second of every day, to not think about the future and what that means, to not think about how he’s probably right. Jeff’s right about a lot of things, she’s learning, but that doesn’t mean she won’t argue with him when it matters.

            “Hey,” she says, suddenly. She pushes him up a bit so he meets her eyes, curious and confused and a little smug. “I’m gonna make you a promise.”

            “Annie—”

            “Shut up.” She fixes him with her steadiest look, her sternest one and he tries to swallow a grin. She fights back her own smile and clears her throat. “Jeff Winger, you are an insufferable, annoying, mean man—”

            “You’re off to a great start.”

            “Shut up!” Annie laughs but pulls the sound back, sets her jaw. “All the things I said, _again_ , and then _but_ you’re also sweet, funny, and kind. Don’t get that look on your face. Your secret’s safe with me.”

            “Thank god.”

            “Quiet.”

            He licks his lips but says nothing.

            She narrows her eyes, judging how likely he is to be quiet – which would be _not likely at all_ – and then says, “I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time but now I think I love you the right way. And I promise you, I will never let you hold me back or hurt me. I will always tell you what’s wrong and what I’m feeling. But I also promise you that as long as you don’t hold me back, as long as you listen to me, I will always want to be with you.”

            “You can’t promise that.”

            “You just promised the same thing.” She gives him her best, most lawyerly look, the one she’s been practising in the mirror while brushing her teeth. “So either I _can_ promise that or you’re a liar. Choose wisely, counsellor.”

            Jeff smirks. “You’re getting too good at that.”

            “You love it.”

            “I love you,” he says, steady, with no hint of teasing. She melts a little. He sighs and rolls away from her. “And I love you enough to know that you should go clean up, take a shower, and I’ll order some pizza and we can watch TV or something.”

            Annie looks over at him while he rolls out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants. When he turns around, she’s still looking at him and his mouth twists into something that’s half smile, half frown, and wholly Jeff. Instead of pulling his t-shirt on, he throws it at her face.

            “Get up,” he says.

            Pulling on the t-shirt, she rolls out of bed. She flips her hair out of the shirt collar and approaches Jeff slowly. He watches her warily and smiles down at her when she rests her palms on his abs. She loves the feel of them and momentarily gets distracted from what she wants.

            “Annie,” he says after a moment, dragging out her name.

            She looks up at him with a smile, completely unembarrassed. After all, he knows how he looks. “Shower with me,” she whispers, knowing she sounds more excited than seductive, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

            Jeff quirks an eyebrow. “Then who will order the pizza?”

            She pretends to think about this. “I think we can order the pizza after.”

            “After?”

            “Yes.”

            He shakes his head at her and says, “Okay.”

            She has to go all the way on her tiptoes to kiss him and even then he has to lean down to meet her lips. But it’s worth it to feel his smile there, to know exactly how happy she can make him. As the kiss deepens, Jeff gets his hands on her thighs and hikes her up. She wraps her legs around his waist, surrendering her weight to him, and tries not to laugh as he haphazardly tries to walk to the bathroom without breaking their kiss.

            In the end, it’s a disaster. He bangs her into a wall, she breaks the kiss and rests her chin on his shoulder. Still, he stumbles and fumbles with the door and they almost fall. She tries hard to muffle her laughter but only manages to do it by kissing his collarbone, a move that distracts him more as he tries to maneuver into his tiny bathroom.

            By the time he gets the door closed, he’s laughing too. He sets her down on the counter, doesn’t protest when she pulls him close and kisses his neck.

            “New promise,” he says and Annie hums. “The next time I pick you up, it’s going to be to carry you over the threshold.”

            “When we’re married?” Annie teases.

            But he replies in a totally serious voice. “Yes.”


End file.
